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Left 4 Dead
alt title(s): Left 4 Dead 2
Francis, Bill, Zoey and Louis.
Louis: We made it... I can't believe we made it!
Bill: Son, we just crossed the street. Let's not throw a party till we're out of the city.
-Left 4 Dead

Coach: Wait for official instructions. (laughs, tossing away instruction sheet dismissively) Wait, my ass.
Ellis: Kill all sons-a-bitches. *pumps shotgun* That's my 'ficial instruction.
-Left 4 Dead 2

A cooperative First Person Shooter proclaimed by its advertising as "the Zombie Apocalypse you can play with your friends", Left 4 Dead reduces the zombie genre to its absolute basics: You are one of a Quartet of Ragtag Misfits caught in the middle of the outbreak of a deadly virus that's turning people into bloodthirsty mutants. Your objective is to make your way from safehouse to safehouse through an area infested with these murderous creatures, and finally reach a pickup point from which to summon the cavalry to spirit you to safety.

Of course, this won't be easy: there could be a herd of thirty zombies, or just one extremely powerful mutant zombie, waiting around the next corner. The game's "AI Director" is watching your progress and planning your next sudden encounter — every time you play is a different experience. He drops health packs less often than you need it and spawns a horde of zombies whenever he's bored. Which is all the time.

More anticipated, perhaps, than the Campaign mode (in which four players step into the Survivors' shoes) is Left 4 Dead's Versus mode, in which eight players, trading off between rounds, control either the Survivors or the dangerous Boss infected: the long-tongued Smoker, the lightning-quick Hunter, the nauseous (and explosive) Boomer, and the Tank. (There's a fifth boss — the Witch, who doesn't react well to flashlights and loud noise — but like the Horde she's not actually a playable character.) The goal of Versus isn't to make it to the next safe room; nine times out of ten, you won't. The goal is to make it farther than the other team. You don't survive unless you're professionals or the other team is pretty bad. In theory, anyway.

The expansion pack takes it further with the ironically-titled Survival Mode: the irony lies in the fact that "survival" is pretty much the last thing you'll be doing. The question is how long you and your friends can hold out against an all-out Infected onslaught before you all die.

In 2009, a sequel was confirmed less than a year after the original. The official L4D blog mentions "...a much larger game than the original, and features new co-op and versus campaigns, all-new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, as well as melee combat". An official trailer gives a release date of Nov. 17. Unfortunately, Valve's claim at launch of the original game that they would update it following the model of Team Fortress 2 updates promptly backfired, as large numbers of people were outraged that they were expected to buy content they were under the impression they'd get for free; this gave rise to the biggest outburst of Ruined FOREVER, uhhh, ever: a 40,000+ people boycott. A month before the sequel was due, the leaders of the boycott shut the group down after Valve's release of a new campaign for the original, "Crash Course".

And then there's the stuff Valve's announced for L4D2, which brings the original survivors and the new ones together...

Not to be confused with the trope of Left For Dead.

Tropes:

  • Abandoned Hospital: The first campaign of the series involves one of these; you have to get to the helipad on the roof to get a lift out of the city.
  • Abandoned Warehouse: Nearly every campaign features one.
  • Abnormal Ammo: The sequel allows the entire team to use exploding or incendiary bullets; however, you'll only have enough for one clip before switching back to regular bullets.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: At least two of the campaigns feature sewers that are big enough to accommodate whole mobs of zombies for the players to fight off. Not much time is spent in them though.
    • The one in the first campaign is actually about the right size for Philadelphia (which is what the levels are supposedly based on).
    • Partly averted with the brief sewer segment in The Parish: you only spend about 30 seconds in it, and the first half of that is in an extremely tight area that may as well have a warning sign saying "A Charger would really suck right here".
  • AKA 47: Done subtly: although the real guns in the game are not named, zooming in on the gun models reveal they are made by fictional companies. For instance, the 1911 pistols are made by "Finleyville Armory" (a play on Springfield Armory), the M16 is made by "American Armory", and the pump shotgun is made by "Renegade" (Remington). The AKM is called an AK 47 bizarrely, though.
    • Given the sheer number of AK knock-offs that exist, however, not to mention the 47 is well past the 25 year limit for copyright protection, it's probably a safe bet that Avtomat can't really collect checks for its presence in media anymore.
  • All There In The Manual: Actually, it's all there in the opening cutscene. Pay close attention and you might live longer. Unless you jump into Versus or Expert.
    • Not to mention the back stories of the characters are actually only explained in the manual, although by taking a look at their character models and hearing some of their dialogue you could probably guess what they are without reading it. Or looking at their model folders (Nam Vet for Bill). Or their NAME ("Everybody calls me Coach, I guess you guys can too.")
      • Only applies to Xbox 360 owners. PC owners only get a scrap of paper with instructions on how to play and the activation code. At least the Left 4 Dead website is there for the research.
      • ...Only applies to 360 owners in paper format, anyway; PC users are able to view the player manual in .pdf format via right-click menu. Not quite the same, but it's a hell of a lot harder to lose.
    • Also in the new trailer for the second game. It clearly shows all the different new infected doing their thing, with the new weapons, and even the new uncommon common: hazmat zombies (who are immune to fire), zombies in riot gear (Who are immune to bullets), swamp zombies (who move even faster and blind the person they hit), and finally, zombie clowns (which emit a squeek from their squeeky-shoes that draws all common infected to them).
      • Though it doesn't show construction zombies, who are immune to pipe bombs attraction effect.
    • On a bio note for the sequel, it's more like All There On The Blog
  • Amusement Park Of Doom: The second campaign of the second game, Dark Carnival.
  • Armor Is Useless: Averted by the Security Zombies in Left 4 Dead 2, who can take a rifle round directly to the faceplate at point blank range and not die. It's a good thing the security company only issued them the front half of the vest, otherwise you would be SOL.
  • Art Evolution — Initial designs for many Left 4 Dead characters, including Survivors and Zombies, had been changed before the official releases. Here is an example of preliminary character designs of the Survivors from the first game.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The special infected are quite smart and are very wary of the presence of the players. Hunters and Boomers will always try to hide around corners or behind thick shrubs so that they can ambush the players. The two may also tag team players if a player is caught by a smoker. Tanks can try to avoid fire the player makes, assuming the player sets the fire off too early. While they can be quite stupid at times, it doesn't happen too often. Tanks are now much smarter in the sequel. When they down someone, they will usually go chase the other survivors instead of just pounding one till they're dead and become a sitting duck.
    • Though pounding one of the survivors to death is actually a smart move and somewhat terrifying, there's a reason you were never allowed to do that in versus.
    • In what is a case that teeters on Artificial Stupidity, It is perfectly possible to get the Tank Burger achievement (kill a tank - 100% of damage must be from melee weapons) in single player while dealing 0 damage personally to the tank. That is not a typo. The three AI survivors can take down a tank by themselves using only melee weapons.
      • This is more due to the absurd damage output from melee weapons and the fact that the tank can only hit one person at a time. It's possible to do the same thing even in versus mode.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Although not too horrible, the Survivor AI has many infamous quirks. This is a great reason to play the game with actual people. See this Youtube video as a hilariously shameful example.
  • Ascended Meme: In Crash Course, in the safe room before the finale, some woman has written a sappy poem about her dead love. Later survivors crapped all over it with various internet putdowns like "QQ" and "Cool story bro!"◊.
  • As The Good Book Says: In Death Toll's "The Turnpike," there's safehouse graffiti where someone wrote "Exodus 9:15" in large letters. If you happen to look up that particular verse ...
    "For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth."
    • More show up in the sequel, which includes great variations on well-known Bible quotes such as:
      Coach: Though I walk, through the valley of the shadow of death ...
      Ellis: Yeah! I'm walk'n in that valley'n I'm kick'n some ass!
  • Autobots, Rock Out!: The finale to Dark Carnival is different from every other in that it has a rock band playing in the background. It even features TWO rock versions of the Tank's theme!
  • Aura Vision: used to find team-mates as survivors and used by undead to find survivors health and location.
  • Awesome But Impractical: The minigun, which can shred oncoming hordes like no other, is never positioned so it can effectively cover more than two of the generally five or so directions that zombies can come from.
    • And for some unimaginable reason, the Director likes to throw the Horde at you in the directions it can't cover. Funny, that.
      • The sequel's machine gun also suffers from this: there are only two in the entire game, neither are pointing in the direction the horde likes to attack from, and the second one is less than thirty feet away from the rescue vehicle.  *
    • 2 also adds the Grenade Launcher, which is good for tanks, but supplants your main weapon and deals a ton of splash damage. Both of which are serious hindrances in a game with ever-present friendly fire and enemies that run right into your face.
  • Awesome Moment Of Cr0wning: Killing a witch with a single headshot nets you the "Cr0wnd" achievement.
    • Which is a Crowning Moment Of Punning, since "crown" refers to the head, "0wn'ing" is obvious internet jargon for beating someone, and it'd likely be pronounced "croned", as in "crone" like an old woman or a witch. Well played, Valve.
    • The sequel adds in the Cl0wned achievement, being both a pun of the first achievement as well as a self-contained pun. To get it, one must honk the noses of zombie clowns.
  • Axe Me A Question, I Dare You: L4D 2 adds an axe, among the other melee-centered weapons.
  • Back Stab: Not in a literal sense, but performing a melee attack on a zombie from behind kills them in one hit and earns you the Spinal Tap achievement. Special infected are immune to this.
  • Badass Biker: Francis
  • Badass Boast: Played over the title card in the commercial for extra badass points:
    Bill. I'll see peace back on earth if I have to murder every one of these animals with my own bare hands!
    • From the E3 trailer for L4D2:
      Coach: And when we run outta bullets... (revving chainsaw) ...baby, they're gonna wish we hadn't."
  • Badass Creed : From the Sequel:
    Nick: We are walking through the valley of the Shadow of Death, and kickin' ass!
    • Another one from Nick, this one played over the intro near the end, and sometimes if Nick is on the verge of death. Instead of screaming for help or whining, what does he say?
      Nick: I have not...come this far...to die now!
    • Made even better if using a health pack or pills mainlining adrenaline at the time of saying this, restoring your lost health and jumping back into action, guns blazing or melee weapons smashing and slashing.
  • Badass Normal: All four eight of the Survivors.
    • Special note is Louis, though, who is easily the most normal of the four.
      • The original featured a Green Beret, a biker, a college student, and an office worker. The sequel's survivors are a bit more "normal", with a mechanic, a coach, a reporter, and a con man.
  • Badass Grandpa: Bill, Vietnam vet and former Green Beret.
  • Bad Boss: The Director in versus mode. Between forcing autospawns in terrible locations, showering the survivors with first aid kits, and often not bothering to send a horde after a boomer attack, it clearly doesn't like the infected players at all.
  • Bag Of Spilling: The intro cinematic shows all the survivors using guns that they don't start with. But during that intro, they either drop them, run out of ammo, or are disarmed, and so when the game opens they're just toting pistols. Additionally, this happens at the opening of each campaign as well.
    • The sequel also plays it straight in the beginning of Hard Rain. After being dropped off to the Burger Tank by Virgil, the survivors realize that they left their bag of guns on the boat.
    Virgil: I'll drop the anchor just off shore, waitin' for ya. Signal at me when you get the gas.
    Nick: What are we supposed to signal him with?
    Ellis: Oh, there's flares in the gun bag.
    Nick: What gun bag?
    Ellis: You didn't grab the guns?
    Nick: Hey, who died and made me gun monitor?
    Ellis: Pretty much everybody.
  • Batter Up: Among the melee weapons are baseball bats and cricket bats.
  • Battle Cry: There are undoubtedly other examples, but the trailer for the sequel gave us a prime example.
    Coach: (whilst beating Zombie ass) THIS USED TO BE A NICE NEIGHBOURHOOD!
  • Battle In The Rain - Hard Rain campaign in Left 4 Dead 2.
  • Berserk Button: Shine flashlight/walk up near/stare too long at/shoot gun near or at the Witch, and you have to deal with a fast zombie who can kill you dead in a heartbeat. Of course, after accomplishing that, she screams in horror and runs away.
    • When playing on Expert difficulty, the Witch will one-shot you if her claw connects.
  • BFG: The sequel allows players to find and use an M79 grenade launcher. You can't replenish it's ammo, but it makes short work of anything.
  • The Big Easy: The final campaign of Left 4 Dead 2 takes place in "N'Awlins".
  • Big No: Any of Survivors' will let loose a Big No if attacked by a special zombie. Especially Louis.
    Louis: Get it off me! Get it off me! GET IT OFF ME!
  • Bite The Wax Tadpole: The zombie hand on the cover of 2 is holding up 2 fingers in the same manner as someone in the U.K. would when telling you to do something unpleasant... Apart from the UK version, where the hand is photographed from the other side, making a "victory" sign.
  • Black And Nerdy: Louis is an IT professional, a normal guy. Standing next to a Green Beret and a Badass Biker would make any normal person look nerdy, even if he is every bit as competent at zombie killing as they are.
  • Blood Knight: Francis, who sees the infection as "the biggest bar fight ever", and Bill, who missed 'Nam and now has wished in 30 years for a new war, so he could fight once again.
  • Body Horror: The Special Infected have undergone horrible and probably quite painful mutations. Have you seen the concept art for the Spitter◊ yet?
    • Not to mention the new look for the Smoker in Left 4 Dead 2. Tongue out of neck D:
    • The original concept art of the Spitter◊ was much scarier and much more disgusting-looking.
      • Word is Valve changed the Spitter from the old form into the new one because she was very polarizing. People either thought she was High Octane Nightmare Fuel because she looked pregnant, or... Nightmare Retardant because she looked pregnant.
    • According to the audio commentary, Valve had a binder full of pictures of horrible diseases that they were going to use as textures for damaged zombies, but never touched it a second time because it was so disgusting; They decided to use fiberglass insulation and cardboard to model the textures after instead.
  • Boom Headshot: It's possible to kill a witch in one hit with a shotgun to the head. But you have to be so close that if you fail, it is very likely she will drop you. This can be avoided on lower difficulties by spraying shotgun bursts into her while she stands up.
    • Any headshot on a common infected with make it's head explode, literally. Only works with primary weapons and the Magnum.
  • Bond One Liner: If you walk over to the helicopter pilots body in Crash Course...
    Zoey: Pilot's License.... Revoked! Dun Dun DUNNN!
  • Bottomless Magazines: The players must reload, but they've endless ammunition for their sidearms and supply caches provide infinite replenishment for your main weapons.
    • The supply caches show up much less in 2, though, to encourage players to switch weapons often.
  • Breakable Weapons: The melee weapons in the sequel were originally meant to all have a limited number of uses before breaking. As it stands, only the chainsaw has such a limit.
  • Breather Level: Although it's definitely not on your side, the AI director does tend to give you a breather inbetween swarms of zombies or boss encounters, especially if you're just limping through.
    • If you're playing on Expert level (the hardest), only in certain areas will you catch a breath. You get twenty seconds, tops, before a horde is spawned anywhere else.
    • All difficulty levels have a breather section mid-chapter in No Mercy Chapter Four while riding the elevator where the survivors have a short conversation before the level continues.
      • Except on Versus, where the hole in the elevator's roof suddenly becomes a bigger problem.
  • Butt Monkey: Ellis, as of the newest trailer for Left 4 Dead 2. Jockey, Charger, and Smoker all want a piece of him.
    • He also tells stories about someone named Keith who always has something bad done to him.
      • Ellis eventually says that Keith drowned in a tunnel of love because his girlfriend didn't want to fish him out.
      • He said Keith almost drowned. He probably survived that as well as the tear gas, being paved over, falling off a roller coaster and the multiple third-degree burns.
  • Calling Your Attacks — The most common occurence is when a Survivor throws a pipe bomb or a molotov cocktail, e.g. "Fire in the hole!", "Grenade!" Additionally, a sort-of Calling Your Attacks is when a zombie announces itself to the Survivors by its distinct cry, signalling a potential attack.
  • Captain Obvious: Ellis, upon spotting a statue of a horse in a park.
    Ellis: HORSE!
    Nick: Nice observation, Ellis.
  • Chainsaw Good - One of the new weapons in L4D 2, and in terms of sheer DPS it's by far the most powerful weapon in the series. It has limited fuel and takes a second to crank, but its raw damage output leaves everything else in the game in the dust.
    • It also comes with the additional disadvantage of attracting every zombie within earshot to the chainsaw's sound. Some see this as an advantage, though.
    • Number crunching has also confirmed that it comes with damage reduction while using it. Attacks from behind inflict half damage, on any difficulty. This is true of Common infected, at the least.
  • Character Filibuster - In the Crash Course DLC level, one of the notes on the wall of the safe room is a full-length Purple Prose-choked love poem by some woman to her dead lover. It takes up nearly half the wall. The other half of the wall is taken up by rebuttals either mocking her or telling her to shut the fuck up.
    • The Other Survivors have to tell Ellis to shut up whenever he rambles on about Keith.
  • Cherry Tapping: It's possible to kill even the special Infected just with the secondary melee attack. Just don't try it on the Boomer.
    • In fact, some people encourage spamming your melee attack on Hunters and Smokers since you can keep juggling them to prevent them from attacking and it saves ammo. Of course, this doesn't totally work out in VS mode due to the melee recharge time.
  • Chiaroscuro: Actually used by the developers to guide the players, after they noticed playtesters' tendency to move toward the brightly lit areas.
  • Circus of Fear: Dark Carnival in the second game.
  • Cliche Storm: For zombie movies. Though this is probably intentional on the part of Valve. If you read the writing on the saferoom walls, many of them are somewhat mocking of the Zombie genre. Overall, Cliche Storms are acceptable in video games that are deliberately attempting to evoke the feel of a particular film genre.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Ellis seems to be one of these. He's always got a story to tell, and and the other survivors have to remind him that now is not the best time for such things. He sounds like a kid in a candy store in Dark Carnival especially.
  • Cluster S-bomb: The survivors in both games say "shit" a lot. (Wouldn't you, though?)
    • Ellis takes the cake on this one, having an entire line made up of almost exclusively of the word "Shit".
    • Notice how both games have no qualms about saying "Shit", but always results in a Curse Cut Short when they try to drop an F bomb? What's up with that?
  • Combat Tentacles - The smoker's tongue, kinda.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Mostly noticeable in VS mode where players on the Survivor side only use uzis and auto shotguns (sometimes assault rifles) and they will scream at or make fun of the people who dare to use pump shotguns or hunting rifles.
  • Cool Car: The escape vehicle at the end of "Crash Course" is a bus. That has undergone some A-Team style modifications. Which may or may not be inspired by the armored buses from Zack Snyder's Dawn Of The Dead
    • While in L4D2, the first campaign's escape vehicle is a Plymouth Superbird NASCAR racer on display at a mall.
    • Ellis, when most people were stocking up on food or evacuating, he built himself a zombie-proof car. Unfortunately, the zombies found the weak spot.
  • Cool Old Guy: Bill.
  • Cosy Catastrophe: Francis seems to view it this way. The rest of the survivors disagree.
    • Ellis seems to have a lot of fun during this apocalypse. It's just too bad he missed seeing Jimmy Gibbs Jr.
  • Crazy Survivalist: The Survivors, although Bill and Francis probably qualify best.
    • Arguably Zoey also qualifies, in that she apparently spent most of her college career watching zombie films, though given that it's All There In The Manual, her Genre Savvy nature is reduced to an Informed Ability depending on who is controlling her.
      • Zoey exhibits Genre Savvy traits in-game with a number of her voice commands, usually spotting trouble from abandoned cabins, creepy hospitals or suspicious moments of calm. And she complains at one point that they run. "I'm calling zombie bullshit on this! They're not allowed to be that fast!"
      • Overall, the virtues the game promotes, such as not splitting up and conserving/sharing health and ammo, are pretty Genre Savvy.
    • Louis also spent most of his lunch breaks practicing at a nearby rifle range.
    • The Church Guy could also qualify, at least in the crazy section. Also fitting in there, L4D2's first campaign features a crazy gunshop owner who will only aid the survivors in getting to a safehouse in exchange for...a pack of cola.
  • Critical Existence Failure: Averted. When seriously injured, you run slower, jump lower, and if you're on pain pills or just brought up by teammate, your health is constantly sapped away. Also, when your health runs out, your character is stuck in one spot on the ground, only able to use their pistols.
    • And when you're really in trouble (out of hitpoints and out of revivals) your vision goes black and white and your heart starts throbbing loudly.
  • Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Each campaign ends with a finale calling for a rescue vehicle to pick up the Survivors. As the vehicle arrives (or the fuel is pumped in the case of the airplane for Dead Air), the Survivors must defend themselves against waves upon waves of common and special infected and fight multiple tanks. Once the rescue is ready, the Director throws everything possible at the Survivors to try to kill them before they can board the vehicle.
    • For bonus awesome, get all 4 survivors to the rescue vehicle alive... after one of you stops to turn around, drag your buddy back to their feet, and mad dash to escape.
      • Not to mention that you face two Tanks almost simultaniously in Swamp Fever's finale.
    • Dark Carnival takes the cake, though. To quote Ellis:
      Ellis: So we gotta set up to rock, and then fight zombies. What next, dinosaurs flyin' down from the sky shootin' lasers outta their eyes?
    • The second half of Hard Rain takes place during a thunderstorm goddamned hurricane. It's more than just a set effect as might commonly be found in other video games. Areas your group previously passed through unhindered are now flooded knee-to-waist deep, and the rain and wind kick up at intervals. As a result, the game reduces how far you can see. Likewise the game not only sends the bass booming with the thunder and lightning, but also turns down the in-game voice, meaning that if you want to say anything, you have to shout over the din of the storm.
    • The start of the finale in Dead Air features one of the most spectacular fake plane crashes ever.
  • Crowning Moment Of Funny: The reactions to friendly fire is sometimes over the top but also funny at the same time with lines like "GOD DAMMIT, WATCH YOUR FIRE!" or "I can't believe you just shot me again!" Some of the lines spoken in certain maps can also provoke laughter, such as this scene in the 4th map of Death Toll:
    Louis: Riverside's a bust. Let's just head to the river.
    Francis: That's better than my plan.
    Bill: What was that?
    Francis: I didn't have one.
    • Echoed in the sequel: (from memory)
      Coach: Maybe we can gas up that car and make our way out of here.
      Nick: That's better than my plan.
      Coach: What was that?
      Nick: Stay here and die.
    • Of course, any dialogue involving the crazy church guy is also a barrel of laughs:
      Francis: I'm going to tear that bell down and shove it up your ass!
      Bill: The guy's nuttier than candy-bar shit.
    • A lot of the new dialogue in Crash Course is hilarious, such as Zoey referencing "the latest issue of I Hate Everything".
      Francis: I hear a boomer! And it sounded Canadian!
      Francis explains his plan in Crash Course: "Well, it's pretty complicated. I don't wanna bore you with a lot of the complex fractions. But, step one is that we walk that way."
    • The song Re: Your Brains was confirmed to be a jukebox song in Left 4 Dead 2.
    • Most of Nick's banter in Left 4 Dead 2. Especially when it sounds like he's channeling Tourettes Guy.
      • Ah, tits!
    • Any bit of setpiece commentary by Ellis. ANY.
    • Coach while in the Mall.
      "Please God, let the food court be okay."
      "... Poor food court never stood a chance..."
    • Coach contacts the military, who ask him if he's encountered the infected. His reply: "Encountered?! Boy, I am covered in zombie blood and puke, and eyeballs, and twenty other parts I don't even recognize! We are as immune as shit!" Doubles as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
    • When you consider that not turning into a zombie may also mean you're a carrier, it's distinctly less awesome. FYI, the military has been gunning down carriers  * in The Big Easy probably by the thousands.
    • After Coach suggests they use a rock concert to signal for rescue, Nick replies with "That's the stupidest plan I've ever agreed with."
    • The fact that one of the new Versus achievements shares the name with a Team Fortress 2 achievement involving throwing jars of your own piss at people.
    • There's one for any player who manages to take down a Tank single-handedly (Hint: Boomer Bile).
    • After reading GOD IS DEAD on the walls of the airport terminal:
      Zoey: Oh no! The zombies killed God!"
  • Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: In L4D2, if you leave the safehouse to defib a Survivor, in a Versus round, you earn the "Heartwarmer" achievement.
  • Crowning Music Of Awesome: In Left 4 Dead 2, RE: Your Brains can be played on the jukeboxes found in some of the campaigns. It signals a Horde attack right after the line "But here's an FYI, you're all gonna die screaming." The Horde's screams are right in time with the chorus that follows.
    • While defending from the stage of a rock concert, Left 4 Dead 2 sends you One Bad Tank with the tank theme turned up to METAL.
      • As well as Midnight Tank, which plays for the other Tank of the finale.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Almost everyone used nothing but the Auto Shotgun or the Assault Rifle, especially in VS mode. Speaking of VS mode, when it came to the crescendos, everyone just camps in a corner, making it almost impossible for infected players to approach unless they were a Tank. The sequel addresses these issues by reducing the amount of ammo piles found, which forces players to switch weapons, and the new special infected like the Charger and Spitter discourages camping.
  • Curse Cut Short: One of Nick's friendly fire comments is "WHAT THE F-"
    • Coach also shouts "MOTHERF—" while being choked by the Smoker, interrupting his own curse with a strangled cough.
  • The Danza: Rochelle is voiced by Rochelle Aytes.
  • Deadly Lunge: What the Horde does when it notices the Survivors' presence. Also, the Hunter's preferred M.O., which allows him to dash several yards in one swipe.
    • In Left 4 Dead 2, the new infected The Jockey does this also.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Surprisingly, Francis, but seemingly in Crash Course only where he has variations of asking (or insulting) Louis (or SUNSHINE BEAMS) if he still feels positive after the helicopter crashed.
    • Nick, to the nth degree.
      Coach: Whispering Oaks! Shit, I used to go there when I was a kid!
      Nick: Great. Now we can die there as adults.
  • Dead Weight: The Boomer, of course!
    • May actually be a subversion, since The Boomer probably wasn't much fatter than, say, Coach pre-infection - most of his impressive girth can be attributed to the methane gas he's constantly burping up.
  • Death Or Glory Attack: Cr0wning the Witch.
  • Dedication: If you die during the finale you don't get to respawn, but as long as at least one character escapes, the credits will start with "In memory of [Player Name]"
  • Deep South: The sequel starts in Savannah, Georgia and makes its way to New Orleans.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: After being downed and revived twice, you see the entire world in black and white, complete with blurry peripheral vision and red item highlights. If you're not healed, you will die. The developers included this because playtesters were frustrated when inexperienced players were repeatedly going down and delaying the group.
  • Demonic Spiders: The Jockey, especially at the harder difficulties. Despite always cackling madly, it can be hard to detect, especially since it doesn't make any noise when about to jump onto a survivor's back (all the other special infected have warning noises when they're about to attack). It's small, so if it comes along with a horde you tend to shoot right over it. It doesn't die outright when whacked off a survivor, and tends to scratch the survivors for massive damage while leading them right into a really bad situation. Hate. Hate hate hate.
  • Distaff Counterpart: The Boomer gets one in the sequel, although the differences are purely cosmetic.
  • Dirty Business - In order to halt the spread of the infection and save what ever non infected people they can, the Military in The Big Easy made it their policy to gun down Carriers (people who don't turn but can spread The Virus) by the hundreds, maybe thousands. Whether this makes them Anti Hero or Knights Templar is open to debate.
  • The Director Is A Cheating Bastard: Unusual, in that the Director is supposed to be continuously tweaking the challenge of the game up and down based on how well the players are doing. However, on Expert, it seems to only tweak it in one direction, where its response to you doing poorly is to punch you in the face, and its response to you doing well is to kick you in the balls.  *
    • This goes for the survivor bots too, as they have aimbot-like accuracy, and cannot cause friendly fire (being able to literally shoot through others). It works, as a half-decent human player is still more efficient overall (due to other factors like bots not being able to use grenades or any particular strategy beyond shooting things), yet a team isn't completely screwed if a player leaves mid-game.
    • The will at least use grenade launchers if a player disconnects while holding one. They're acually quite effective with them.
    • "Tweaking difficulty" generally, in this game, translates to the amount of pressure it keeps on you, or the amount of medkits and pain pills it grants. 20 points from a Horde attack, though, means you need to play -perfectly- or you won't live to see the extra pain pills and medkits!
    • Not to mention on that Expert (when you need the medkits most) the Director will only give pain pills, reserving the medkits for saferooms and the finale.
    • The recent DLC Survival Mode has the Director being even more of a Jerk Ass; though that is the whole point of the mode. Two tanks? Same time? With no lull in fighting the regular zombies to heal up or rearm?
    • The sequel takes this to ridiculous extremes. Who knows what the rest of you said about the Director's mother that pissed it off so badly. Three hunters within ten seconds, two chargers behind one door, and the survivor AI can't figure out the whole "run and shoot at the same time" deal (which, since that's what most of the crescendo events are based on, makes things more than a little unfair).
    • Alternatively, spawning a Tank inside a safe room. Normally a challenge but not overtly difficult especially if you can 'trigger' the Tank early. Now imagine a Tank far enough inside to be undetectable and untriggerable. Behind a Boomer who is just inside the door but also fairly undetectable (meaning you shoot because the Tank freaks you out and pop the Boomer or push back the Boomer... who will probably get punched by the Tank and pop anyway). Both of whom are at the end of a Gauntlet event where the Hordes don't stop and you have to run through said Hordes.
    • On a non-director-related note, AI tanks can always see the survivors,
    • One of the director's favorite things to do is to outright murder the survivors right before they would have been rescued.
  • Dressed To Kill: Nick's wearing a suit in the Zombie Apocalypse, which he claims cost him $3000. Then again, he is a con man.
    • Word is, he stole the suit anyway.
  • Dumb Muscle: Francis to some degree, but with the recent Crash Course DLC, Louis and Zoey make it more obvious how uneducated Francis is (one of Francis' lines has him think they're in Canada!)
  • Downer Ending - For the sequel, when you consider that at least some of the players resistance to The Virus may stem from them being carriers (rather than just immune). Your characters at the end just got rescued by the military, who have quite clearly made it their policy of dealing with carriers by exterminating them Blackwatch style
    • Which makes no sense because it would be a waste of effort and manpower to escort survivors away from the zombies, only to be killed later, thus it would have been easier to just leave the survivors to die.
      • One theory is that the military is no longer killing carriers, and is instead using them to find a cure or to outlast the infection. Why else rescue them at all, or have equipment to "handle" the carriers other than a loaded gun?
      • It should be noted that the military certainly don't go to too much effort to pick the survivors up at the end of the second game. (The last helicopter is leaving at the other end of the bridge in 10 minutes, you'd better run)
    • It should be noted that the final two campaigns of the original also end with the survivors being "rescued" by the military...
  • Dummied Out: Many voice clips from the survivors, such as them warning each other of nearby Boomer or Smoker (not spotting them, just hearing their presence and they always vocally announce of a Hunter being around the corner.), never play in the game, but the sound files for them are present in the game's folders.
    • They play all the time; many of them (as well as other dialogue pieces) are heavily dependent on many factors including other nearby survivors, location (and certain locations within a level), how many times they've been revived, and so forth.
    • The splitscreen functionality from the console version is still present in the PC version, albeit only accessible with a little tinkering in the game's console.
  • Dungeon Bypass: Guarding the doors and windows is all well and good, but <del>sometimes</del> more often than not the horde just crashes through a wall.
  • Ear Worm: The music that plays when you complete a level in Left 4 Dead 2 will stay in your head for days.
  • Easter Egg: Found among the apartments in No Mercy is "The Orange Box" cereal box. On top of that, if you were extremely lucky, you just might spot a Head Crab walking among the environment.
  • Elevator Action Sequence: Not on the elevator itself, but on the fourth level of the first campaign requires holding off the horde while waiting for the elevator.
  • Elite Mooks: The sequel has new normal zombie types with specific effects. For instance, zombies in Hazmat gear are immune to fire, whilst the "Mudmen" can hide in the water and blur the vision of the people they hit, and zombies who were infected wearing riot gear are immune to regular bullets from the front. And in the Dark Carnival level, you will be facing zombie clowns...
  • Enemy Summoner: The Boomer special infected, and to a lesser extent, the Clown uncommon infected from the sequel.
  • Epileptic Trees: Nothing about the origin of the Infected is explained, leaving players to come up with absolutely every theory under the sun. Even off-screen supporting cast within the game itself fall afoul of this trope as they bicker among themselves on the various wall scribblings, etc.
    • It is mentioned in Kotaku interviews, game reviews and other non-in game sources that the zombies are infected with a mutated rabies virus that the playable survivors are immune to. That's why they don't get turned when they're exposed to the zombies bodily fluids.
      • Directly mentioned in the sequel ingame, with the players discussion immunity and carriers.
  • Everybody's Dead Dave: The only non-zombies you hear from in the game are the four survivors, the Church Guy (who quickly turns into a zombie), and the people that rescue you at the end of the campaign. There's hints left behind of other survivors that have passed by before (including the graffiti on the safe house walls), but you never see them.
    • And then there was that one guy (also presumably immune) who went down the path you follow through the Dead Air campaign, spray painting GOD IS DEAD everywhere. You find his body inside the airport, a pistol and spray can next to him — presumably he shot himself.
    • There is a woman you find who had been spraypainting about barricading the supermarket. When you get in, it's secure, but it's obvious she died fighting off a horde just outside of the safehouse.
    • Slight aversion: You can hear ongoing firefights while traversing the urban environments. They might not be alive much longer, but there might still be other immune survivors out there.
    • In the first map of Dead Air, towards the end, if you look up at the hotel you can see a single room with its light on. The stairs up to the rooms are barricaded, which may imply the presence of one or more survivors in the hotel.
    • The sequel adds in Virgil, a faceless boat captain that helps Survivors, and several soldiers in New Orleans.
  • Escort Mission: What the game becomes if a survivor is low on health and no one has any healing items.
    • Left 4 Dead 2 plays it straight in Dead Center in the 2nd level by having you deliver a pack of soda to the gun shop owner and the game telling everyone else to "escort the cola delivery."
  • Everyone Calls Him Barkeep: Coach. Justified in that he prefers to be called by said moniker rather than giving out his real name.
    • The Church Guy.
    • The system files for the game itself treat the survivors this way, for example Ellis is listed as "Mechanic".
  • Everyone Chasing You — The Zombie Hordes are a stellar example of this.
  • Exploding Barrels: Come in three flavors, propane tanks that explode when shot at, oxygen tanks that leak before exploding when shot at, and gas tanks that burst into flame when shot.
    • Left 4 Dead 2 also features fireworks, which are available in Dark Carnival only. They work similar like a propane tank AND a gas tank (explodes at first, then fireworks are ignited for a while in a set area).
  • Expy: Zoey looks a lot like Claire Redfield from the Resident Evil series. It's even more apparent if you've ever seen Resident Evil: Degeneration. If Claire had Zoey's girl-next-door personality and her geeky knowledge of zombie movies, they would be indistinguishable.
    • Louis acts a lot like Jim Chapman, and his atire is similar to Shaun.
    • Coach has been frequently compared to Uncle Phil. Really.
    • And Nick from the sequel looks nearly like Finn from The Club.
      • Or Leisure Suit Larry, take your pick.
      • Really? He sure looks like/sounds like/dresses like/acts like Michael from Burn Notice to me.
  • Fake Band: The Midnight Riders from "Dark Carnival" have a website and a You Tube channel.
  • Falling Into The Cockpit: Versus mode, infected team. While a player can run through the campaign mode to build up their survivor skills before going in, infected players have to learn it all on the fly for their randomly assigned characters.
  • Fat Bastard: The Boomer.
  • Fetch Quest: Going through waves of infected for some cola.
  • Film Posters: One for each campaign. You can see them here.
  • Fire Forged Friends: What the survivors are.
  • Five Token Band: Well, four tokens, but there's a wide array of ages — if not ethnicities — presented here.
  • Foregone Conclusion: the poster for the Survival Mode-only level, The Last Stand.
    It Doesn't End Well.
  • Fragile Speedster: The Hunter can be bowled over with a single shotgun blast, and takes forever to slay a pinned survivor, but moves like a ninja on speed. Unsurprisingly, it's regarded as the hardest infected to play but also the most fun.
    • The Charger is pretty fragile as well, though he does a lot of damage and, true to his name, moves very fast.
    • Although the Charger is the most durable out of the playable Special Infected (not including the Tank)
      • He still goes down after 2 hits from a cricket bat.
  • Fridge Brilliance: The Dark Carnival finale. It bugged me the background music had lyrics. Then I realised that's the whole point of the set-up. The Midnight Riders would have been miming their performances!
    • That just leaves the question of why.
      • If Coach was a fan when he was younger, then likely the Midnight Riders are pretty old. One of their tours/albums was even called "Quarter Past Midnight," Warhol's famous saying applied jokingly to the name of the band. They do look kinda fat and past their prime in the posters. It could just be a parody of other real life incidents of such chicanery, though.
      • He did say their new albums weren't any good.
    • After listening to the song "Midnight Ride" so often, I finally realized that it has a cowbell in it! My goodness, that song is curing my fever!
  • Fridge Logic: Why are there so many cricket bats?
    • ...and why are there so many battle ready katanas at a carnival?
    • You could say this about all the weapons. Why the hell are there so many pistols, sniper rifles, shotguns, sub machine guns, grenade launchers and the like set up at all these spots as if someone was expecting you? If there was an infection you'd probably run into more cricket bats than weapons.
      • More cricket bats than firearms In the Southeastern US? Don't bet on that.
    • The reason why there are so many weapons may well be that other Survivors didn't do all that good a job of surviving. As the commentary node about draped bodies says, some survivors may have died from their wounds in the safe room, and their pals didn't take the weapons for some reason. The playable Survivors aren't the only people in the in-game world with access to guns.
    • Aside from a couple of the extremely bizarre ones (*cough*Katana*cough*), most of them are either justifiable (machetes, fire axes, police batons) or just improvised household weapons (baseball bat, cricket bat, frying pan). The only thing that doesn't make sense is that a whack to the head with a guitar does as much damage as two point-blank shotgun blasts.
  • Frying Pan Of Doom: One of the melee weapons.
  • Game Breaker: Corner camping. Have all survivors cram up in a corner of a wall or a small room and constantly melee the infected rushing in or shoot all at once. Aside from a Tank, nothing can break through this formation. This is so common that most infected players in VS mode wait it out until the survivor players move again and both teams will corner camp when it's their turn as survivors.
    • The sequel Left 4 Dead 2 introduces the Spitter, which addresses this problem by hurling heavy damaging acid on the floor, and the Charger, which knocks down survivors in its path.
      • Although some players complain that the Charger itself is a game breaker, given the ease with which it can One Hit Kill players on certain maps. Opinions are divided on whether the Charger is overpowered or the other infected are underpowered, but most agree that it is the best special infected.
    • Also in the sequel, many of the cresendo events now require that the players remain very much on-the-move — e.g., running through a guantlet of zombies to press a switch, reach the rescue vehicle, scavenge for certain supplies, etc.
    • The sequel also reduces this technique (Shiva Stacking) by making such corners less appealing in general. They may be alarm cars in the vicinity or other hindrances, generally there will be more than one way to reach a corner and the player will not be able to cover both, and corners will rarely if ever be in front of empty game world or flat wall meaning that Infected can always spawn behind or above a corner in some fashion. Failing this, such spots will take time to navigate or get into/out of, leaving the players vulnerable to Spitters or simply allowing Special Infected to spawn in while they're delayed.
      • That said, special mention has to go to the far-right corner in the Dark Carnival finale. As there is no cover, and all the spawn points are located far away, four players with rifles can kill essentially anything (including Spitters) before it can get close enough to attack.
  • Game Mod: A soundpack one that changes all the sounds of the infected to Macho Man Randy Savage quotes. Hilarity Ensues.
    • Tourettes Shitcock Syndrome: There's also a Tourette's Guy soundpack for the Tank. Watch it here. Also qualifies as a Crowning Moment Of Funny.
    • And there's another that replaces all playable infected with the survivors, amusingly.
    • On top of that, one can also replace the Tank's sounds with those of the Heavy from Team Fortress 2. Hilarity ensues as the Tank taunts the survivors ("Who send all these babies to fight?!") berates the team for killing it ("Little, little man!"), runs around grunting and talking to its 'Sandvich', loudly exclaims that it is on fire when it is indeed on fire, and even calls for a medic when taking lots of damage from survivors. Sadly, the sound pack was pulled from some sites and cannot be found easily.
    • Scout zombies, that is all.
    • Some people have gone so far to change the Tank's music as well, like turning it into "Can Can", Benny Hill, and even Final Destination!
    • Also, Johnny Bravo Tank.
    • Nude Zoey.
      • And Nude Witch. Rule #34 takes itself very seriously.
    • Billy Mays Tank.
    • YEAAAH!
    • Pee-Wee Herman Infected. Can you say Nightmare Fuel?
    • If you think all the sound swapping is hilarious, try playing servers that allow up to eight survivors in the game. That's right, you'll have multiples of the same characters running around and you will go WTF when you see messages like "Zoey saved Zoey." Even Expert becomes a bit easier with 8 people's worth of firepower running around.
    • Teletubbies. Now you can be as afraid of them as Jerry Falwell.
      • Another good case of Nightmare Fuel, watching empty-eyed Teletubbies running at you and trying to rip you apart.
    • This game + soundtrack from 28 Days/Weeks = Pure terror.
    • Left 4 Dead 2 had demo mods! Such mods include ''Don't Stop Me Now'' as a Jukebox song.
      • That's a reference to the zombie movie Shaun of the Dead—one scene has the four characters wailing on a zombie with broomsticks, seemingly in-time with 'Don't Stop Me Now' playing on the jukebox.
      • It was pool cues, not broomsticks.
    • Possibly the greatest mod ever
    • Here are some hilarious soundpack mods. You can thank me later.
  • Gameplay And Story Segregation - Surprisingly averted in L 4 D 1's intro.
  • Gatling Good: You get the odd mounted minigun here and there. It's set up so that the gunner will have to be covered by the other Survivors, though.
  • Genre Savvy: Zoey, who, as before, wasted most of her time watching zombie movies, who at one point calls "zombie bullshit" on them being able to run so fast.
    • Often memorably averted by the players themselves. You know those stupid things you yell at people in a zombie movie for doing? Odds are you'll do at least one of them, and only realize it afterwards.
    • The CEDA are quite genre savvy in the sequel, pulling their main operations back to where zombies can't get at them, establishing some very thorough checkpoints to 'screen' possible infectees and so forth. Unfortunately a number of their outposts seem to have been overwhelmed regardless.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game is apparently fairly popular in Japan, possibly owing to the game's linear structure and immense replay value, which is surprising considering how unpopular western-developed games, specifically first-person shooters, are in Japan. Even Hideo Kojima has confessed that he's a fan of the game!
  • Glass Cannon: As mentioned above, the Hunter is fast and fragile, but a perfectly timed pounce can knock off up to a quarter of a survivor's health before they even see it coming. The Boomer is even more fragile, but a skillful player can do even more to hinder the Survivors than with the Hunter.
    • The Spitter is not only fragile, but also the slowest infected. It makes up for this with a ranged area attack that can, under ideal circumstances, incapacitate the entire team.
  • Goddamned Bats: The common infected, who all have the ability to slow you down just by hitting you.
    • Especially if there's a Tank; the common ones will not let you move out of the way.
      • Not at all helped by their uncany ability to flank you and pinch you between four or five others.
    • The Clown Uncommon-common qualifies to a lesser extent. Though no harder to kill than any other normal Infected, if not dealt with, they can drag in a Boomer sized horde. Which in turn makes it more difficult to pick out the Clown who will keep attracting more zombies.
    • Let's not forget the Mudmen Uncommon-common, who can take more punishment than the average zombie, crawl rapidly on all fours (often resulting in them being confused for a jockey or hunter at a distance) and blind the survivors with mud when they attack. Oh, and they can move at full speed in swampwater.
    • Hardhat infected in Hard Rain which take noticibly more damage than normal infected and are not drawn to pipe bombs or bile, making trying to cover a limping escape with one of these far less effective as they swarm five at a time.
      • They're also not drawn to Bile Bombs, due to the effects of the bomb having the same coding as the Pipe Bomb that attracts hordes.
    • The zombies in the sequel also have this uncanny ability to rush at you and immediately run to your sides so you can't hit them, then you blindly turn to smash them while 6 more surround you. They also don't move out of your way when you try to shove them and run.
  • Good Bad Bugs: The game is almost filled with various glitches and exploits that make the campaigns almost laughably easy but can be a life saver on Expert difficulty. Most of these were patched for VS and Survival modes to keep the balance.
    • As of late, there seems to be a random bug in the sequel where after you start the finale, the rescue vehicles immediately arrives.
  • Goomba Stomp: Stepping on a zombie's head from above will kill them instantly and may possibly break your fall. Special infected are immune to head stomps and will, in fact, Goomba Stomp you if they fall on your head while you're on a ladder  *.
  • Gorn: The new damage modelling in Left 4 Dead 2 borders this, if not outright landing inside it. Nothing bad about it per se, but seeing exposed spines, internal organs, etc, after playing the first game is rather surprising, or, in the case of zombies running at you while their bowels slowly roll out to the ground trailing a straight line, Bloody Hilarious.
    • "Nothing bad about it?" All but the weaker pistols and sub machine guns will tear away massive chunks of flesh, exposing tons of zombie organs, all of which are dropping buckets of blood and occasionally unraveled intestines onto the ground; pipe bombs toss around extremities like there's no tomorrow, and leave corpses which are blown rather messily in half... vertically.
    • It could've been a lot worse; in the commentary, it's mentioned one of the artists kept a "nightmare folder" full of images of people suffering from horrific injuries, mutilations and infections. They ended up not using any of it as reference for the game because it was deemed too horrific.
      • Indeed, the Infected wounds are really only the result of housing insulation and potato skins, according to the same commentary.
  • Gravity Barrier: keeps you away from a zombie breeding ground and to keep you moving along to your safehouse.
  • Griefer: Online is filled to the brim with them, whether you have people do team killings, steal and waste items, or do anything else to slow down your progress. It's still better in this regard than most online games, though.
    • Playing as the infected is basically griefing the survivors as the goal of the game. The griefers are getting their kicks from the game itself most of the time!
    • Some players like to set up gas cans, fireworks and propane tanks before calling the Infected in Survival Mode. This tactic can prove helpful and give you more time than you would originally have had by killing off tons of zombies. Unfortunately, you have some really excited players who don't want to wait to set up, and shoot the gas cans usually when you are standing right beside it. So you get set on fire, your health is cut in half, and sometimes to make it worse, the Greifer doesn't even give you a chance to recover and calls the horde. You'll be lucky to have healed before they come at you.
  • Groin Attack: A One Hit Kill on normal zombies, even with the pistol. Try it, it's fun. Though a shattered pelvis does tend to make walking rather difficult.
  • Guns Akimbo: All characters can find and dual wield a second pistol for extra ammunition in the magazines. There is even an achievement called Akimbo Assassin. You can unlock it by using the dual pistols as your only weapons in a story campaign. You can still use molotovs and pipe-bombs, but not the mini-guns.
  • Harder Than Hard: Expert mode is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Only experts can expect to survive. This doesn't deter people who should be playing Normal from playing only this mode, however, to the eternal vexation of anyone who wants to actually finish a level with all of their limbs still attached. The same applies for Advanced mode if the people you are playing with are still good, but not great at being zombie killing machines.
    • As an example: Normal mode causes Horde attacks to take off 1 or 2 percent of your life. Advanced, you lose 5. Expert? 10(from behind) to 20(from the front). And the only thing that generally changes between the difficulties is generally the damage the Infected do.
    • And the Friendly Fire damage. In Easy, you are practically immune to this. In Expert, it does much more damage than the zombies.
      • To clarify, on Expert, you deal full damage to allies, who have 100 HP, which is the same amount of HP that the regular infected you slaughter with wild abandon have. The basic Shotgun does up to 240 damage.
    • Expert also reprograms the Director, resulting in much more difficult situations and a genuine desire of a number of players to absolutely not linger in any given area (for those not in the know, staying in one area too long will make the Director angry, and he'll prod you to keep moving with zombie hordes, Hunters, Smokers and Boomers. On Easy, Normal and Advanced, you have some time to look in rooms for extra stuff, and backtrack if you think you missed something. On Expert, if you don't keep moving, you'll be overwhelmed very quickly).
    • Left 4 Dead 2 has Realism mode. It is EVEN harder than Expert, even on normal. This mode removes all the auras allowing you to locate other survivors, items, and infected which are pummeling other survivors. Zombies take less damage when shot anywhere except the head, and survivors only respawn at Safe Rooms. It can also be set to Expert mode, and so far all you get is an achievement for it.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: The light chopper pilots in both 1 and 2 were making repeat trips into the infection zone, getting bit for their trouble. They still kept the rotors spinning right up until the bitter end. The possibility exists for the players to do this as well, if they go back to help soneone pinned or hanging on a ledge and get pounced or killed in the process.
    • Your Mileage May Vary on that last one. Many players prefer their friends to just leave them, and get them out of a rescue closet later on.
      • Or in the case of the sequel, just defib them from the dead or kill them and then defib them to come back with more health.
  • Hes Just Hiding: Literally. Whenever one of the guys die, they're found later trapped in locked closets somehow. These closets serve as respawn points for player characters.
    • According to the Developer Commentary, this is supposed to emulate the way other survivors would inevitably hook up with the main characters in an actual Zombie Apocalypse movie.
    • To add to this, if a character(s) dies along the way and the others reach the safe house, any dead characters will appear with everyone else in the safe house in the next chapter.
    • Also averted in the final chapter of each campaign after the rescue vehicle has been summoned, any character killed during the setpiece finale stays dead (replacing "You'll be rescued soon" with "But your friends can still escape"). When the credits roll after any or all of the (live) survivors escape, instead of saying "the survivors escaped" it says "in memory of [dead players' names]"
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Most of the NPC Survivors are played by guys who also did voices for Team Fortress 2.
  • Hide Your Children: The Infected are invariably adults.
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Many of the special infected, but especially the Spitter.◊
    • Not to mention this newbie Special: The Jockey
    • Also there is a female Boomer now. Squick.◊
    • Alternatively, watch the Dark Carnival menu screen background in L4D2 carefully. Ever have a zombie clown stare into your soul with Glowing Eyes Of Doom?
  • Hilarious In Hindsight: The Fictional Video Game in Stay Alive is a co-op monster/zombie shooter set in New Orleans. Compare to Left 4 Dead 2.
  • Hit And Run Tactics: This is the second best way to deal with a Tank, provided you're not injured. The best is with Fire.
  • Hoist By His Own Petard: The sequel features the "bile bomb," which allows the survivors to replicate the results of Boomer vomit, which causes a horde to target a splashed infected. Until your teammate freaks out and throws a pipe bomb, anyway.
  • Hold The Line: A number of situations (such as turning on the power to open up a route or summoning the rescue vehicle in the final level of a campaign) summons several waves of zombies while the survivors have to hold out for a set amount of time until the route opens. The survivors are generally provided with health assets, additional weapons and ammo, choice of grenades, and a (generally completely useless) minigun in some situations to help fend off the horde.
    • The minigun is only useless if the other players aren't watching the back of the person manning it. Effective team play makes it awesome.
    • The sequel changes this up a bit; many events now require you to start an event, run through an area, and stop it somewhere else.
  • The Hyena: The Jockey's main "weakness" is that you can hear his constant, crazed laughter from a mile away, effectively killing any element of stealth he may have had.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Generally averted, except for one peculiar instance. If a survivor drops their handgun for a melee weapon, when they are downed they will produce another handgun that disappears as soon as they are hauled back onto their feet.
    • Or if the melee weapon is a chainsaw that runs out of fuel.
  • Idiot Ball: The reason the Hard Rain campaign ends with you defending a fast food joint with a bright sign is that at the start of the campaign, while getting off the ferry, the survivors simply FORGOT the flares!
    • And depending on the lines spoken, they forgot the guns too, which explains why they only have pistols with them in the start.
  • Idle Animation: The infected alternate between facing the wall, barfing up their guts and killing one another. The survivors alternate between stretching, wiping their faces, or picking their noses.
  • Impending Doom POV: Used in the intro of the first game—we see a hunter attacking Louis from its perspective.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Although the characters themselves rather like it.
    Francis: Hey Zoey, we're PASSING GAS
    Zoey: Hahaha, farting.
    • In the first game, Crash Course gives us this little number:
      Francis: Guys! Watch out for the Steam!
      Zoey: *sensual groan* Ooh I love Steam!
      Francis: Yeah, Steam's okay I guess.
    • In the sequel, the new survivors are looking to continue the tradition. "Axe me a question" indeed.
    • The Achievements suffer too. "Bridge Over Trebled Slaughter"?
  • Incredibly Obvious Bomb: The pipe bomb is one, but with good reason - its red light and high-pitched squeal attracts the standard Mook zombies, making throwing them less of a matter of where to, but a matter of when to.
  • Interface Screw: If the Boomer throws up or explodes on a character, their field of view goes blurry and green and in the third person for several seconds, making it hard to defend themselves from the Horde that the bile summons. Also, music priority switches to Boomercide, meaning that a particularly skilled team can temporarily mask the sound of an incoming Tank...
    • Boomer Bilevision also removes the "pinned-survivor" alert and that pinned player's red outline that shows up when a survivor is downed.
    • The screen also turns to black and white if your character is downed 3 times (the next knock down kills them). This can make spotting some items a bit difficult extremely easy as items retain their colored glow on a black and white screen. The colorless vision is also accompanied by a heartbeat, which can add to the tension if you lack first aid.
  • Intrepid Reporter: Averted in that Rochelle at first sees the entire thing as a story that can put her on the map, but turns out to basically be fighting for her life and totally unconcerned about the event itself.
  • Instrument Of Murder: Among the new melee weapons in L4D2 is the humblest of God's instruments, the electric guitar.
  • Invisible Wall: Only the Infected in Versus mode will run into them, and if you get close enough they stop being invisible... instead they become labeled "wrong way!".
  • Its Always Mardi Gras In New Orleans: The last campaign of Left 4 Dead 2 takes place in The Big Easy during the "Louisiana Festival."
  • It Can Think: The Director is actually a rather well working AI system. Depending on the difficulty, it will decide when to place more zombies to hinder your efforts. On Expert difficulty, it just wants you dead and doesn't pull any punches.
    • The Hunter itself qualifies to a lesser extent. If you take a look at them, they have duct taped all the loose ends of their clothing together to make them more aerodynamic.
    • Or it could just be that all Hunters were Parkour practitioners before becoming Infected.
  • It Got Worse: The sequel, with it fairly obvious that the Infection has taken over most of the eastern seaboard. It even applies to the Special Infected: The Boomer has expanded more, the Tank's lower jaw has been merged into its growing chest and generally looks like it's been through hell, the growth on the side of the Smoker's face has expanded and he now has about eight tongues coming out of it, and the Hunter is showing sores on his arms and bare feet.
  • It's Short, So It Sucks: The common cry of people who manage to blow through a round very quickly (40 minutes is fast for 5 maps while 1 hour is the average time). The short so it sucks complaint has become much louder with the new Crash Course campaign because it's only two maps long and it suited for a quicker VS game. The complaints for Crash Course being short rose up, despite the fact that most people already knew how short it would be months ago.
  • It's Quiet... Too Quiet: Because of the way the Director AI is programmed, Hunters, Boomers and Smokers will not spawn if there's a tank in the vicinity, and same goes for the random Hordes (the ones from scripted events still spawn, though).
  • Jerkass: The crazy church guy in Death Toll summons a horde on the survivors, due to not trusting them about being immune.

    • Nick in the sequel can be quite a dick on a few occasions. In the finale of Dead Center, Nick calls Jimmy Gibbs Jr. an ass hole when Coach explains why the guy is so popular. In the tunnel of love section in Dark Carnival, Nick complains that instead of being stuck in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, he's stuck in a hillbilly tunnel of love and mentions that there was a sign outside that said half off price for cousins. Oddly enough, none of the other survivors react to Nick's hillbilly comments.
  • Jiggle Physics- Oh god, the jiggle physics...
  • Kaizo Trap: The end of "The Church" in Death Toll after The insane survivor mutates. He's most likely to become a Boomer, so have fun with that.
  • Katanas Are Just Better - Partially averted in Left 4 Dead 2 as the katana is not noticeably better than the other melee weapons, but that doesn't stop certain players from ragequitting if they don't get the first one the team comes across (and from using it exclusively, even to the detriment of the team, if they do get one).
  • Killer Game Master: The AI director. Particularly on Expert mode, when he stops even pretending he doesn't hate your guts.
    • AI Is A Crapshoot: Is it just me, or has the Director become even more hateful recently?
  • Kill It With Fire: There are Molotov cocktails in the game. Cue screeching.
    • Left 4 Dead 2 features incendiary bullets. However, certain zombies in the first campaign wear fireproof hazmat suits.
  • Last Stand: Survival mode. Also, you can see the poor results of these as you progress through the games. One safe room writer from "Swamp Fever" was apparently morbidly proud of how well they did.
    We held out longer than Shreveport. We held out longer than Baton Rouge. WE HELD OUT LONGER.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: When someone on your team insists they can take on a Witch (they don't ask, they just do it or excitedly say "Ohh let me take her!"), just sit back and enjoy the show.
    • Tanks are also common targets for Leeroy Jenkinism.
      • This is due to the fact that everybody wants the "Man versus Tank" achievement, which is rather hard to accomplish especially when playing with bots. The latter situation is still manageable, if you know how to set it up and exploit the AI's weaknesses.
      • The sequel takes this to the next (and literal) step: not only does the game give you melee weapons that include fire axes, machetes, katanas and chainsaws, the "Tank Burger" achievement calls for killing a tank only with said melee weapons.
  • Left For Dead: Well, yeah. In the first game, it is implied that the survivors are, for whatever reason, running behind various evacuation efforts. The second game opens with the new cast being ditched by an evac chopper.
  • Leitmotif: Every Special Infected gets two of their own tunes, one that plays when they spawn, and another that plays while they're attacking a Survivor.
  • Le Parkour: Players who are skilled at the Hunter can navigate walls and rooftops with ricocheting jumps.
  • Lighthouse Point: The Last Stand.
  • Lightning Bruiser: The Charger, along with the Witch and Tank, although to a lesser extent.
  • Love It Or Hate It: "refreshingly straight forward, or short and repetitive with zero narrative"
  • Luck Based Mission: Depending on where enemies spawn and what types they are, you can either have a smooth sailing game or a nightmare of just trying to survive.
    • VS is also the same where sometimes the infected spawn at bad spots in the finale or the Tank spawns while it's on fire or stuck in a window. At other times all it can take is one tank to wipe out the survivors. Of course one bad team can cut down on the luck factor.
  • Ludicrous Gibs - Combined with Pink Mist - a pipe bomb will turn the zombies right on top of it into unidentifiable pieces of meat, but mostly a blood fog.
    • The sequel ups the ante; rather than simply causing them to disintegrate, a well-placed pipe bomb will send dozens of zombie limbs flying in all directions, littering the area with blown-in-half corpses.
  • Made Of Iron: The Tank, The Witch less so, but still counts. The Survivors come close, too.
    • Pain pills can also provide a temporary health boost to the survivors, who can therefore demonstrate some Made Of Iron-ness.
  • Made Of Explodium: The Boomer's death causes him to go off like a frag grenade. Don't stand too close, you dolts!
    • It also shares one of Halo 1's grenade explosion effects.
    • Close to the beginning of the third level on the first campaign, the survivors can blow up a gas station, potentially killing everything around...including themselves, if they're not careful.
      • The developers originally were going to have the Boomer be just like walking grenade, which would have caused instant death or massive damage to the survivors if shot too close. Thankfully, Valve opted to make the exploding Boomer just cover you in bile.
    • The Spitter is more or less the same, except she turns into a puddle of Ouchy Acid. Woe befall the newbie who thinks using a melee weapon on her and not moving is a good idea.
    • There is also the Cut Elite Mook known as the Fallen Survivor. They're more or less walking Gas Tanks.
  • Made Of Plasticine: It's not uncommon for the basic infected to be graphically dismembered by a shotgun blast, a few stray bullets, or being bashed with a rifle butt.
    • And who knew ball bats and crowbars could tear off human limbs with such casual ease?
  • Magical Defibrillator: Capable of bringing players back from the dead in the sequel.
    • "Magical" is putting it mildly. On "Dead Center," a Charger can tackle a player off the top story of a 30+ story hotel. If he does it in the right place, you can find the player's body in the lobby and shock it back to life after that fall.
  • Memetic Badass: A number of forums have taken a single graffito referencing a "Chicago Ted" (itself a Shout Out to an old gaming website) and seem to be attempting to turn him into a Chuck Norris-esque zombie slayer.
    • The wiki has him hammering a Tank from behind, a la Resident Evil 3, barefisted and barechested, allowing survivors to escape in a car. Not just hammering on it, but riding it like a horse while beating it in the face with a baseball bat with a nail in. Badass.
  • Memetic Mutation: "I hate hospitals." "I hate stairs." "I hate forests." "I hate small towns." "I hate lawyers." "I hate tunnels." "I hate vans." "I hate train yards."
    • "I hate Ayn Rand."
      • And adding to the almost endless list is the fanmade Map, Dead before Dawn is, predictably, "I hate malls".
    • From the new DLC: "I hate Canada."
    • "I miss the internet."
      • It should be noted that this line is unrelated to Francis' seemingly never-ending list of hated items, vests being the exception. It is, in fact, graffiti found on a safe room wall underneath a back-and-forth argument reminiscent of petty internet squabbles. With Crash Course now released, Francis now hates helicopters, flying, walking, sometimes steam, and birds. A lampshade is hung over when Zoey says "Hey, Francis! They have the latest issue of I Hate Everything!" and Francis quips back with "I hate latest issues."
      • So is Francis by any chance related to movie Bonecrusher, who also hates everything (and whose hatred is also a meme itself)?
    • "Grabbin' Peelz!"
    • RAGE QUIT! Though this is spewed over anyone leaving over for ANY reason, even if there is no raging involved. Some people are now also shouting RAGE KICK over people who are too kick happy in forcing people to leave.
    • New to Left 4 Dead 2, 1. bind <key> "vocalize useadrenaline" 2. Play as Ellis. 3. Press that key over and over. 4. ??? 5. WUBUBUBUBUBU
    • Chocolate helicopters and 'ficial instructions, both from Left 4 Dead 2.
    • "I love horses" and "Horses are for riding not eating".
  • Message Board: Saferoom graffiti really acts like this, although people who leave the saferoom probably don't return. Ever.
  • Mistaken For Junkie: Louis
  • Mighty Glacier: The Tank is only RELATIVELY slow in the sense that it moves slower than the survivors. It is, however, far and away both the toughest thing in the game and the most dangerous.
    • Unless you're injured, in which case there is little fundamental difference between being injured and being dead.
      • Also, in enclosed spaces, most survivors will shoot the tanks while running backwards. This makes it easy for them to get caught up on the scenery; and then they lose the speed advantage.
  • The Millstone: They show up a lot more than in most online games (or maybe the focus on teamwork just makes them a lot more obvious).
  • Missed Moment Of Awesome: To help placate all the naysayers who complained L4D2 came out too quickly, Valve could have taken a page from the Rock Band/Guitar Hero rule book and allowed gamers to export the campaigns and characters from the first game into the sequel. Though no doubt PC gamers will do this service in Valve's stead.
  • Mission Pack Sequel: Left 4 Dead 2, which was based on development that was originally supposed to be free download content for L4D1. Created an Internet Backdraft of unbelievable size.
  • Molotov Cocktail: Lovely, lovely, molotov cocktails...
  • Monster Clown: Left 4 Dead 2 features zombie clowns.
  • Musical Spoiler: Musical warning is given for when a horde appears, a tank appears, or when a witch is nearby. It also plays softly whenever any special infected are nearby, making those who know each one's theme music able to know one's nearby even without hearing them or seeing them.
  • Most Annoying Sound - Step 1: Bind a vocalization to its own key. Step 2: Press this key repeatedly. Step 3: BOOMER BOOMER BOO-BOOM-B-B-BOOMER
    • If done online, most players will be quite eager to kick you off the team. With bullets.
  • Most Wonderful Sound - WUBUBUBUBU!
  • The Musketeer: In the second game its possible to have a melee weapon as reserve.
  • Mythology Gag: Bill, during early development, shared his last name with Half Life's Barney Calhoun.
    • "Still Alive" can play on the Jukebox in the Parish, albeit very rarely.
  • Narm: Any time one of the team dies (outside of a major battle), one of the characters, usually Zoey, launches into a short speech.
    Zoey: (calmly; mid-battle) "It's not going to get any better, you know."
    • Louis: "Shit. Shit! Shit! Shit! SHIT!!"
    • The best is when they see the body of a dead Survivor, and then his weapon. "Oh god, not Fr-HEY, WEAPONS HERE!"
    • It's better when they interrupt the speeches. "I'm gonna miss that son of a PILLS HERE!"
      Zoey: Do you think it's ever... gonna go back to normal?
      Bill: (attempting to heal himself) I'll see peace back on earth if I (healing done, speech will now give way to suspiciously relaxed-sounding sigh)
      (two seconds of silence)
      Louis: That's what I'm talkin' about!
    • For some reason, Francis's screams while incapacitated sound hilarious to me. They remind me of Goofy.
      • That's because Francis screams like a bitch. So much for being the tough guy...
    • The way Francis yells "Hunter on (whoever)!" when one of his teammates gets pinned is rather more "Dude, totally hot!" than "Oh, no!"
    • Louis' scream as he falls off a ledge? Used here to comedic effect.
  • Nakama: Listen to any one of the survivor's speeches after a comrade has been downed and tell me you don't get this vibe. Then of course there is this...
    Louis: "Mister, if one of us dies out here, I will shoot my way in there and beat you to death with my gun!"
  • Never Live It Down: In Crash Course, Francis will not let Zoey forget about shooting the zombie helicopter pilot. Granted, it was at the beginning of the campaign, so it's justifiable.
    Francis: They're comin'! Zoey, pretend they're all helicopter pilots!
    Zoey: Zombies, Francis. He. Was. A. Zombie.
  • Never Split The Party: Seriously. Even on the easiest difficulty setting, if you split up you die - the game actively spawns a Hunter or a Smoker on you, which is inescapable if you don't have a party member to kill it with.
    • Skilled players who spot them first can escape harm. However, attempting this is generally not recommended.
      • Even if the lone player doesn't get attacked, the other players will yell at the runner for leaving them behind as they get slaughtered.
    • Somewhat averted in expert games when the team is near a safehouse, people are begging the person who ran ahead to stay inside and not come back to save them from whatever horde or special infected that's got them pinned down.
    • This backfired slightly in L 4 D 2, when Valve tried to introduce events that would force the group to split up. Players had been so conditioned to stay together that they couldn't get past it.
  • Nerf: In the original, players could "shiva stack" (wait in a corner or secluded room, all bunched up and repeatedly melee). This made it nigh-on impossible to extricate them with anything other than a tank. The sequel is going to make stacking less useful with new zombie types (such as the Charger, and recently announced Spitter).
    • Players in certain areas, like the No Mercy finale, could hide in a closet and bottleneck an area as zombies flooded in, posing only a threat to Smokers, Tanks, and Witches. The new Special Infected in L4D2 can ruin all this, with a little help from the upgraded Director.
    • Versus mode in general has been nerfed in L4D2, with a drastic increase in the number of Invisible Walls and health packs, a general reduction in environmental effects (most noticeable in Hard Rain, where the water no longer slows the survivors down), and a scoring system based purely on distance travelled, when two equally skilled teams will both make it to the safe house, barring a lucky witch or tank attack (both of which have, of course, been nerfed). Needless to say, there is a great deal of speculation on the quality of Valve's playtesters
      • In fact, melee weapon damage to Tanks have been nerfed recently. Damage is now 5% per hit instead of 10%, which means now that survivors will most likely have to resort to run and gun tactics now instead of everyone running up to a Tank and smashing him with four Frying Pans to death.
  • Next Sunday AD: The death notices in the church state that the game is set a few months in the future. Value updates them every so often to keep the dates in this trope.
  • Night Of The Living Mooks: The game pretty much shuffles the Horde's character models at random.
  • No Animals Were Harmed: parodied, "X zombies were harmed in the making of this film." (Where X is the number of zombies killed during the campaign, which is usually at least one thousand zombies)
    • In the sequel, the typical kill count per campaign is now over two thousand zombies.
  • Non Sequitur Thud: One of the the openings of Crash Course has Francis talk about how much he loves helicopters, until Zoey reminds of his well-known trait of hating everything.
    • More germanely, Bill will occasionally stutter "Wha — who are you?!" as another Survivor helps him up.
  • Noodle Incident: Ellis brings up quite a few of these in-game before being told that telling these during a zombie apocalypse might not be the best idea.
    • Also this:
    Nick: Great, a swamp. Just what my suit needed.
    Rochelle: The suit you've been covering in zombie brains for the last few days? That suit?
    Nick: Brains come out, swamp water doesn't. Don't ask me how I know that.
  • Not Using The Z Word: Averted: During a quiet moment, Francis will occasionally complain about "the vampires" and Bill will correct him: "They're zombies, Francis."
    • "Call these freaks whatever you want!"
    • Mocked in one of the Safehouse graffiti notes. "Move during the day they only come out at night THATS VAMPIRE'S[sic], MORON!!"
      • Thanks to the sequel, we know that moving during the day may be more dangerous. Witches are active during the day, crying and sobbing and slashing anything that gets in their path (but may be less easy to provoke, with hands shoved in her face)
      • And let's not forget that Zoey calls "Zombie bullshit" on the game's antagonists (and their level of speed).
      • Also, Louis comments on Riverside, "If you ignore the crazy guy and the zombies, nice town."
  • N Word Privileges: Coach drops one near the beginning of the Tunnel of Love section in Dark Carnival.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: How the Infected spawn in during a Versus game.
    • AI controlled characters can teleport as well, probably a feature programmed in to make sure they couldn't get in the way of players and block them in room or corner, and also to hurrily save a player if there is a very far trek ahead for the bot. However, on some occasions they can even teleport when the player is looking right at them.
  • The Ogre: The Tank.
  • One Hit Kill: The Witch's first strike.
    • Which is actually only a one-hit-kill on Expert difficulty. Otherwise it's just an incapacitation.
    • Falling off a sufficiently large drop is instant death; Chargers, Smokers, and Tanks can all take advantage of this for instant kills.
      • It gets ridiculous when you're glitched into it, and it's a three foot drop.
    • Melee weapons and Desert Eagle dish those out in the sequel to ordinary infected.
  • Only Six Faces: Partially averted in the second game; while not truly unique, the game can blend together a variety of pieces and procedures to generate around 780 different looks for the Infected. Other than that though, every Special looks the same though this is more for gameplay than for aesthetics.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: The Infected are not really undead, but rather, very, very sick people who have been severely taken over by the virus. As such, they have been programmed only to spread the infection and then die. Not to mention that the zombies don't even bite you. Instead, they will punch, kick, and claw the crap out of you.
    • The Church Guy, however, who becomes an infected, claims that he was bitten, so it may be possible that the infected can tell the difference between standard humans and those that are immune.
  • Out Of Focus: Unlike the other three survivors, Bill didn't get any new lines of dialogue in Crash Course. If the player is paying careful attention, hoping to hear new dialogue, Bill's silence is noticeable.
  • Panty Shot: If you get behind a Spitter, you can see her thong poking out. DO NOT WANT!
  • The Power Of Friendship: Literally. Nothing will get you killed faster than leaving your fellow survivors behind and trying to Rambo your way through the next level alone.
  • Painting The Fourth Wall: The ending to the Dark Carnival has you activate the stage effects for a band that was originally going to play. The next two Tank cues then have a very distinct rock feel to them over the original orchestral.
    Nick: Hate to break it to you, Coach, but your heroes lip-sync. There's a tape back here labeled "Finale".
  • Pocket Protector: Mostly averted; bullets can penetrate both zombies and materials to varying degrees. More powerful weapons can even shoot through floors and walls, allowing an astute player to kill things without necessarily having seen them.
  • Rage Quit
  • Rare Guns: The Desert Eagle, SPAS-12 and SCAR-L in Left 4 Dead 2. The starting pistol, a SIG Sauer P220, is also stated in the commentary to be customized, which would explain the 15-round magazine.
  • Real Is Brown: The first game was pretty dark and grey. Parts of the second are brighter and more colourful. Presumably someone somewhere is crying some more about it.
  • Respawning Enemies: Both the Director and boomer bile have the tendency to summon fresh hordes of zombies from previously cleared rooms with no obvious point of entry.
  • Replacement Scrappy: The cast of Left 4 Dead 2 according to the boycott group, after seeing the E3 trailer and reading small tidbits about them.
    • It seems like while at first the new cast were all "meh", Ellis, Nick and Coach soon warmed up to the fans. However, the same can't be said for Rochelle.
      • Apparently, there shall be a crossover between the two sets of survivors, called "The Passing", wherein the two groups meet in Georgia. Hatred and Peelz versus 'Ficial Instructions and Chocolate Helicopters WUBUBUBUBU.
  • Rule OF Cool: While it is overkill, Grenade Launcher + Incendiary Ammo = many many flaming zombie parts raining down.
  • Tempting Fate - In the field with lots of cars with alarms in The Parish, Ellis might say "You know what would be bad right now? A Tank." Luckily, this does not trigger a Tank.
    • Also done in Dark Carnival when it comes to activating the merry-go-round. If Coach looks at the sign that shows the height requirement:
    Coach: "You must be this tall to ride." Well, at least there won't be any Jockeys.
    Nick:: Nope, just lots and lots of Tanks.
  • The Right Hand Of Doom *Ahem* Charger in Left 4 Dead 2 *Ahem*
  • Rule Thirty Four - Yes, Left 4 Dead has a porn parody, entitled "Left 4 Head''. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find something dull and rusty to gouge my eyes out with... Not like Yahtzee didn't warn you: "GUY WITH LONG TONGUE + HOT COLLEGE GIRL = IDEA BULB"
    • "Oh god it's going for my pants"
    • For something slightly more SFW...
    • There is now a (mostly) nude Zoey mod. The only surprise is what took them so long.
      • There is also a topless mod for the spitter, and a thong mod for both gender boomers. Say it with me now, "DO NOT WANT"
      • Or maybe, you do.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor:Averted, originally, Zoey and Francis were going to have a relationships, but playtestors found it distracting and Valve removed it.
  • Running Gag: Ellis in the second game, starts sprouting a long winded story whenever he reminded of something, only to be told it's not the time.
    • In Crash Course, Francis repeatedly berates Zoey for shooting the zombified helicopter pilot, followed by Zoey emphatically pointing out that he was a zombie. This is repeated in L4D2, where the other survivors will argue with Nick because he shot the helicopter pilot who rescued them at the end of Dark Carnival.
  • Sarcasm Mode: Rochelle's reaction to Ellis' fanboyism over Jimmy Gibbs Jr.
    Rochelle: Who's the guy on the poster?
    Ellis: The greatest man of all time. Try reading a book or something.
    Rochelle: Jimmy Gibbs Jr...yay.
  • Screams Like A Little Girl: Francis to some degree. When he is being attacked while incapacitated, he will sometimes scream in a higher pitched and silly voice.
  • Scripted Event: Possibly the most awesome one ever, on the runway—a 747 crashes right next to you, erupting in a massive fireball.
    • Also, when the gas station explodes if you shoot it in No Mercy
    • Left 4 Dead 2 adds lots of new scripted events that kick ass. From the burning down hotel in Dead Center to the terrifying weather in Hard Rain.
      • The weather in Hard Rain is actually controlled by the Director depending on various factors.
  • Self Imposed Challenge: Several have achievements for them in both versions: The first gives us Akimbo Assassain (Only use pistols and explosives), Safety First (no friendly fire for a whole campaign), Nothing Special (no damage from special infected for a whole campaign), and more. Left 4 Dead 2 comes loaded with Confederacy of Crunches (clear a campaign only using melee weaponry and grenades), Tank Burger (kill a tank with only melee weapons, which will obviously be an issue if you try for the aforementioned run), and The Real Deal (Survive a campaign on Expert Realism mode). Grab a friend or three, you might need them.
  • Serious Business: Handfuls of people take the game very seriously and will scream at you or call a vote to get you booted if you do anything they don't like (not the Too Dumb Too Live type player mind you). More noticeable in VS mode where people will yell at you for not saving them from the infected quick enough and/or yell at you if you don't do enough damage to survivors or just plain outright miss your attacks.
    • In fact, in most VS games, when someone becomes the Tank, all the infected players put all their hopes on the Tank player and expect him or her to to kill the Survivors in one go. What most people don't realize that the Tank alone cannot kill the Survivors unless the players are extremely stupid and the Tank needs support from the other infected. If you're the Tank and get caught on fire or die without killing at least one player, expect most people to call you a fail Tank.
  • Set A Mook To Kill A Mook: The result of a zombie being hit by a Bile Bomb, including the Special Infected.
  • Sheathe Your Sword: It's usually better to not shoot the witch. Also applies to some of the crescendos (sometimes it's a lot easier to throw a bile jar and run past the horde than to actually fight them).
  • Shipping - Some people make a very big deal about who Zoey is placed next to on the various official campaign posters...and now it's starting with Rochelle as well.
    • There's quite a bit of fanfic out there that ships Zoey with the Hunter or the Witch as well. Yeah, I'm creeped out too.
    • *cough* Nick and Ellis *cough* Dead Center *hacking cough*
    • Have y'all heard they're starting to ship Zoey and Ellis? No bull! They haven't even appeared together (yet) but it's happening. (Hey, This troper thinks they'd be cute together anyway)
  • Short Range Shotgun: Nicely averted. The shotgun's a viable weapon choice even in open areas.
  • Shout Out - Well, if Louis' clothing change from a sweater and combat gear to a white dress shirt and a red tie doesn't clue you in...
    • Some of the graffiti (and one of the achievements) references the "Zombie Genocider" achievement of Dead Rising, which rewarded the player for killing 53,595 zombies.
      • Dead Rising's "Zombie Genocider" achievement was for killing 53,594 zombies, thus the Left 4 Dead achievement ("Zombie Genocidest") requires one more kill than Dead Rising. Take that, Dead Rising!
      • It appears that this has caught on; Prototype has a "Trail of Corpses" achievements, for killing 54,596 infected. Difference being that the Prototype Infected are explicitly 'not zombies.
      • Valve have introduced a new twist — the "Littlest Genocide" achievement, which requires you to kill 5,359 zombies on the Crash Course DLC campaign.
    • There are clues that the game takes place in Pennsylvania (the cars have license plates like Pennsylvania's, there is a Mercy Hospital in Pennsylvania, a Riverside, PA, the fourth campaign takes place in the Allegheny National Forest, and in Crash Course Zoey has a line telling Francis that they're in Pennsylvania). George Romero's movies were all set in Pennsylvania.
      • The commentary for No Mercy also says that the buildings were based on the Philadelphia skyline.
      • The game mostly appears to take place in the Pittsburgh area, however. I'm a college student there, Mercy Hospital is one of the U. Pittsburgh Medical Centers. Our street signs are blue like the ones in the game (Philadelphia street signs are green), Allegheny National Forest is near Pittsburgh, and from No Mercy it's clear the city is surrounded by mountains like Pittsburgh. The only thing that clearly is NOT based on Pittsburgh is the airport, which appears to be within the city limits, Pittsburgh International Airport is about half an hour out of the city (due to the mountains, there isn't much level ground to build an airport).
      • Also:
      Zoey: Oh, nice, a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I know how this movie ends.
      • However, news vans marked "NBC 10" are seen in Chapter Four of Death Toll. NBC 10 is Philadelphia's NBC affiliate.
    • Not to mention the countless shoutouts to zombie movies, ranging from things Zoey says to a room where you can see the remains of a zombie killed by a lawn mower.
      • The messy lawnmower scene in Blood Harvest is a Shout Out to the zombie movie Braindead, which was directed by Peter Jackson.
    • Aside from references to specific zombie movies, some which are mentioned above, the game itself is a homage to the entire zombie movie genre. Each campaign is presented as a movie, with a theatrical poster at the beginning and a credits sequence at the end. All in-game graphics are shown under a subtle film grain filter (the subtlety of which can be changed in the options menu, at least in the PC version), and musical cues are used to highlight certain situations. Various zombie movie tropes are referenced, lampshaded, played straight, or subverted (sometimes all four!). And of course, the placement of enemies and items being controlled by an AI Director.
    • And, of course, a most brilliant reference to a completely non-zombie movie: "He slimed me!"
      • And then there's the Hunter, who looks quite similar to the protagonists of the Assassin's Creed and Thief series and is very stealthy at times as well.
    • Even though it's ostensibly from a fictitious school, Louisiana gamers may appreciate that Coach wears a purple and gold shirt.
    • The Dead Air campaign features a Shout Out to Nietzsche. A man spray-painted "God Is Dead" (a phrase made famous by Nietzsche himself) on the walls at several points before he apparently killed himself.
      Zoey: "Oh no, the Zombies killed God!"
      Francis: "God's dead, huh? Well, join the damn club."
    • Upon picking up an SMG, Louis might say, "This is just like in Counter-Strike!"
    • "Game over, man! Game over!"
    • The escape vehicles in Crash Course are clearly modeled on the zombie-smashing buses from the Dawn Of The Dead remake.
    • If the criterea is met, Zoey will say "Groovy."
      • Usually triggered by Zoey picking up a shotgun right after Francis does; Francis has a similar line:
      Francis: Groovy! (either Louis or Zoey snickers audibly) What? It is groovy!
    • Some of the scenery has remarkable similarities to movie scenes, such as the hospital storey that is still under construction or the luggage conveyor room.
    • Based on the new trailer released for Left 4 Dead 2, one scene shows Coach eating a chocolate bar and another scene has Nick make fun of Coach by trying to convince him to go up the stairs faster saying that the escape helicopter is made out of chocolate. This could be a possible reference to Doc Louis who also had a heavy preference to chocolate.
    • In the first map of The Parish, a jukebox can be played in the bar and has a few songs selected at random, one of them being Still Alive.
      • And by the same singer "Re: Your Brains."
      • The melee weapons in Left 4 Dead 2 are all Shout Outs to various sources. The cricket bat, for instance. One would suspect the katana is as well. Then, of course, there's the crowbar...
      • Not to mention those that have speculated on the origin of the wooden baseball bat. Considering they had a crossover preorder item, many suspect it's The Scout's Sandman.
  • Dark Carnival may be a shout out to House Of The Dead: OVERKILL's "Carny" level.
    • Or possibly the Dark Carnival level from Blood (a game that was also brimming with shout-outs). Or, for that matter, any of a dozen horror movies that have used circuses and theme parks as settings or set pieces.
    • Don't forget, the gnome you win for getting 750 points at the shooting range game is the exact same model as the gnome from Half Life 2 - Episode 2.
      • And, just like its predecessor, you get an achievement for carrying it with you for the whole campaign.
    • Swamp Fever begins the same way Crash Course does: one Survivor having shot the infected pilot, and another berating him for it.
  • Sinister Subway: The second level of No Mercy goes through a subway.
  • Sound Coded For Your Convenience: All the boss zombies make a distinctive noise when nearby (although not directional, unless if you have surround sound) boomers give off a grotesque bubbling noise, smokers hack and cough, hunters growl and give off a loud screech when pouncing, the tank pants when not moving and thumps around when moving and the witch cries. Additionally, every single boss (and other events, like a zombie swarm) has their own distinct musical cues (the Tank's especially, which continuously plays from the point it spawns notices the player until after it dies), to the point where it is possible to anticipate bosses up to a minute ahead of time by listening to the orchesteral score.
  • Squick: One theory suggests that what the smoker shoots at you isn't his tongue- it's his intestines...
    • Not sure if this applies in the first game, but the sequel slightly confirms this. Snapping a Smoker's tongue in L 4 D 2 tends spawn an extremely tangled up wad of 'tongue', and spawning in an improved Smoker in Garrys Mod allows you to see that it does, inside its mouth, have a normal-sized tongue.
    • Another theory suggests the same thing for the Boomer where the belly button would be.
      • Again, generally confirmed in the second game, with the growths being a bit more... distinct.
    • Don't forget that theory concerning the Witch and her fetus claws!
  • Standard FPS Guns: One of the nice things about L4D2 is that it introduces a variety of new weapons - both melee and firearms - which makes up for the slightly generic nature of the first game's weapons. For example: there are variants of the assault rifle (accurate and long ranged, but weak, strong but slow-firing and inaccurate).
  • Stop Helping Me: The survivor AI when it comes to healing. They will do their damn best to keep you going, but will usually do so at the wrong times. Shooting a horde of zombies? Here, take these pills, but don't swallow them too fast! Tank on your ass? Let me use my first aid and heal you anyway!
  • Stop Having Fun Guys: Very noticeable in VS mode. Using the Hunting Rifle somehow makes you hinder the team, regardless of your skill, getting heavily damaged by the zombie players makes you a sucky player, and missing your attacks as a special infected also makes you the worst player ever. Unless you use the same guns they do and never screw up in a VS game, everyone will want you gone and they will vote you off if they really hate your "poor" skills.
  • Stupid Sexy Flanders: Ellis. Or So I Heard.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Any map that has a river in it in Left 4 Dead 2. Unlike the first game where being underwater too long would drain your health eventually, being submerged in the second game will instantly kill you.
    • The water in 2 is so fetid that it will kill an infected that's in ghost mode. Causing their corpse to pop out of thin air, natch!
  • Superpowered Mooks: In addition to the aforementioned Special infected, the second game features "Uncommon Commons," who all act like the common infected, but have little perks to help protect them. CEDA workers in hazmat suits are protected from fire; clowns honk their clown-shoes and call hordes; swamp men crouch low and obscure your vision when they hit you; sugar mill workers have helmets to protect them from headshots and noise cancelers to prevent them from running at pipe bombs; and riot officers wear armor that can only be efficiently damaged from the back.
  • Super Power Lottery: The special zombies, who randomly received super-powers to go along with their new hunger for flesh. Particularly the Tank... let's face it, if you must be a zombie, wouldn't you rather be a ten-foot tall killing machine that can withstand multiple shotgun blasts to the face and throw cars around one-handed?
    • Or Survivors off of tall rooftops, if the Director is feeling particularly assholish.
  • Tainted By The Preview: The complaints of the L4D2 boycotters mentioned above and below were all based on what little footage is there at E3 2009 (Some did say their boycotting of it was because Valve went back on their promising free updates to the first game which the sequel would inevitably have).
  • Taking You With Me: At certain points in the sequel (the windows in Dead Center, the bayou in Swamp Fever, and the bomb craters in The Parish), a well-aimed Charger can grab a survivor and bring them both careening to instant death. (He can get an instant kill in the Atrium without killing himself, although he does still take a bit of damage and it's hideously rare).
  • Team Dad: Coach. As much as he gripes about them, he appears to genuinely care for the rest of the crew and attempts to keep them out of harm's way.
  • That One Level: The crescendo event of "The Barns" in the "Dark Carnival" campaign. Notable because there isn't a large wave of zombies like other crescendo event rather than an ENDLESS OCEAN of zombies that doesn't even let up until you get into the safe house. Also interesting to note that this is the chapter right before the concert finale and is notably harder if you aren't prepared.  *
    • A Chainsaw is also helpful in this part since you can just plow through the horde.
      • Or any melee weapon, for that matter.
  • The Scrappy: Rochelle is the most actively disliked character in both games; most of her hatedom comes from the fact that she replaces geeky and strangely attractive Zoey and how she doesn't seem as witty as the other survivors.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Zoey is the only playable woman in the first game; Rochelle is the only playable woman in the second.
    • Lampshaded by Nick in the sequel; when Rochelle dies, sometimes Nick will say "There goes repopulating the Earth."
  • The Tetris Effect: Play the game for a good hour or so. Close your eyes. See the zombie horde rushing towards you?
    • Just try walking past someone in a hoodie without having to suppress the urge to yell "Hunter!"
    • Try walking past a gas station with cans resembling propane tanks and resist the urge to pull the trigger on your non-existant gun, or walking past a red parked car, or hearing someone hack and cough. You get the idea.
  • They Changed It Now It Sucks: The sequel had been met with so much scorn; the characters (especially Rochelle), the settings, and everything else under the sun.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: The reaction of both the players and the characters anytime anything happens to draw the Horde. The moments that fit the trope most are those where you have to make a metric asston of noise to advance.
    • Any time the Tank's theme plays. Oh Crap.
  • Token Minority: The sequel has two-out-of-four black characters instead of the one in the original: Coach and Rochelle. Rochelle is still makes the game follow The Smurfette Principle, though.
  • Too Dumb To Live: For the online co-op. If you have someone on the team who just keeps making dumb decisions, you'll shout this trope name. May also cross with a Leeroy Jenkins.
  • Took A Level In Jerkass - Francis snarks at Zoey and others throughout Crash Course.
    • And Louis to Francis during Crash Course as well on at least two occasions.
    Francis: Why are you still wearing that stupid tie? Got a meeting to go to? *laughs*
    Louis: That's funny, Francis. Why don't you take your mustache, your chaps, and your vest and go find yourself a parade?
    Francis: *Grumbles* I don't see what's wrong with vests...
    • In No Mercy:
    Bill: If I start to turn, shoot me.
    Francis: What if just your beard starts to turn? Can I shoot that?
  • Too Good To Last: The result of the L4D2 boycott group. While the founders of the group created the group with the intention of getting Valve to keep the support for the 1st L4D alive after the sequel was released and would boycott if they didn't do so by the 2nd game, many of the people that joined the group only done so for the sake of "boycotting" and not paying attention to what the founders were trying to do and they also joined the group to just troll Valve. On top of that, when the founders were invited by Valve to personally play test L4D2 and was told by Valve that they had more content planned after Crash Course, many of the group members called the leaders complete sellouts. While the group did get near 40,000 members and lasted for 5 months, all the constant bickering and trolling within the group became one of the major reasons why the founders decided to shut the group down.
  • Too Soon - A writer for the Houston Chronicle accused Valve of this for setting a game in ruined New Orleans. A few million extended middle fingers in his direction later, the game was released anyway.
  • Unorthodox Reload: Survivors can reload their guns and swipe repeatedly at zombies with them at the same time. As long as the same weapon is kept equipped while it is being reloaded, it will continue reloading at the normal rate, even if the gun is being swung around nonstop. That has to take some extreme coordination to push shells/cartridges into a firearm whilst simultaneously flailing it about...
  • Unpleasable Fanbase: It's a long story, trust us.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: Lampshaded by Coach in L4D2, when he sees the Riot gear-wearing Zombies.
    Coach: "Those things are wearing armor.." [beat] "I want armor!!"
    • Possibly a reference to early development as well; Coach was at one point to wear football equipment to act as armor.
    • Inverted in that uncommons do carry usable equipment (bile jars in Dead Center, nightsticks and pistols in The Parish), but (being zombies) never actually use it.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: There is just something so fun about jumping on top of a lone survivor as a Hunter, laughing in delight as you tear him or her apart, knowing they're completely and utterly helpless.
    • This epitomizes why Versus is so great. You know these morons you scream at for running off by themselves and getting killed because of their own stupidity? Now you can do the killing when they lag behind their team as you pounce as a Hunter or grab them as a Smoker.
      • Same for survivors who decide to rush ahead. Nothing spells cruelty and humiliation more than incapping and/or killing someone by the safe house.
  • Videogame Setpiece: Most prominently in the last stage of Dead Air, when the survivors leave the saferoom to see a plane on approach go out of control, impact the ground, and slide in on fire before exploding.
  • Villain Decay: In L4D, survivors ran away from the tank. In L4D2, survivors run towards the tank. While brandishing frying pans.
  • The Virus: If you're unlucky enough, you turn into a constantly crying, always-guilty Witch, an exploding fatass, get Gene Simmon's tongue, become an flying Parkour expert or turn into the Hulk.
  • Visual Pun: The boxart is a zombie's left hand holding up four fingers, with the thumb ripped off. Same thing in the game's intro.
    • Originally it was a right hand. Luckily for Valve someone pointed it out and now we get the maximum value of the pun.
  • Wall Jump: The hunter can do this, with practice. In fact, this is the only way to get to certain places without using the noclip cheat.
  • We Cannot Go On Without You: If there are any bots on the team, you'll have to start the level over again if all the human players are dead, regardless of if there is a bot player alive. It becomes a Wall Banger when playing against a team of bot Survivors in versus mode and they are capable of moving through the level on their own without the guidance of a human player.
  • What Happened To The Mouse: Originally, Left 4 Dead gave no insight into what happened to the people who gave you rides to the next scenario, or to the gear you ended the level with. This was changed by the Crash Course DLC, which shows us the fate of the chopper pilot f'n dead. On the other hand, you don't find out what exactly happens to the armored van...
    • Left 4 Dead 2 takes some time at the start of each scenario to close out the "plot" of the last one, showing in no uncertain terms what became of the escape vehicle/ wheelman.
  • What The Hell Player: Shoot one of your fellow survivors, and they'll yell at you. Bill has the best example, actually using the trope name.
    Bill: "What the hell are you doing, Francis?" "Secure that weapon!" "God damn it, watch your fire!"
    Francis: "Nice shot, Louis; that was my ass!" "Watch where the hell you're shooting!" "You do that again, you're gonna be firing that thing out your ass..." "Stop — shooting — me."
    Louis: "Whoa! Hey! Don't shoot, it's me!" "I'm gonna shoot you back next time..." "''DO. I. LOOK. LIKE. ONE OF THEM?!''"
    Zoey: "Ow! That's not funny!" "Why would you do that to me?" "Aagh! Damn it, Bill!"
    Nick: You suck at shooting.
    • Coming in close second is Coach.
    Coach: Excuse me? EX-CUUUSE ME?
    There's gonna be some BIBLICAL shit happening to you if you do that again!
  • The Woobie: Arguably all the survivors. But Ellis. Just... poor Ellis...
    • The witch, anybody? People go on suicide missions just so she would stop crying. D=
  • Whoring: Players could get minimal damage from hordes and the Hunters by constantly spamming the melee attack button, which created problems for VS mode. Valve have made a Nerf for it where melee attacks now require a quick cool down before being used again. Luckily, this does not apply to the co-op mode. Aside from that the only way to break through melee whores was with a Tank.
    • The sequel is addressing this with a new boss type, the Charger, whose purpose is to knock over anybody not smart enough to get out of it's way.
      • And then added dedicated melee weapons that not only don't have a cooldown, but kill anything short of a charger in a single hit, thus completely defeating the purpose of the original nerf.
      • Also recently announced is the Spitter, who can spit area denial acid which causes severe damage.
      • All of the new Special Infected can do this. Jockeys can even steer you into a witch.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Left. 4. Dead. (Probably meant to be a nice little poke at the number of Survivors, though.) And the number of full campaigns, the number of playable special infected, the maximum size of each team, and oh no I've gone cross-eyed.
  • You ALL Look Familiar: At least the developers tried to avert this - there are twelve different variations for every single model, which number to around one-hundred.
    • Developer commentary reveals it is MUCH more complicated than that. Each model variation for things like zombies and cars can be altered with the use of a "filter", which doesn't change the look, but does change things like dirtiness and bloodiness, as well as general clothing or damage level. As a result, each singular model in the game can be modified into dozens of different looks.
    • Played straight with the Special Infected, presumably to simplify gameplay.
      • Except in the sequel, maybe; there's a screenshot◊ showing a Boomer that looks somewhat the same as in L 4 D 1, except for a different hairdo. And there's a female Boomer variant as well (you can see it on the L4D2 official page).
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Special Infected which are stuck or otherwise unable to catch up to the Survivors will occasionally be killed off by the Director, with the death noise often being faintly audible to human players.
  • Your Head A Splode: Shots to the head of regular zombies with primary weapons leave only their neck and a Pink Mist.
  • Zerg Rush: The AI director will send these at you at random, when a boomer vomits on you, in pre-programmed Crescendo Events where you're forced to make a ton of noise to continue moving, or if you accidently set off a car alarm, or whenever he's bored, which is all the time. The normal infected also like to rush pipe bombs because of the smoke detector alarms rigged to them.
  • Zoey Is About To Shoot You!: Several of the campaign posters.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Duh.
    • What's relatively unknown, however, is the scale of the epidemic and whether or not it's confined to America. The military seems to be relatively intact, having the capability to launch rescue missions and bombing runs, implying the chaos hasn't spread across the entire United States.
      • Clarified in Left 4 Dead 2, just a few rooms into the first campaign, Dead Center: A large map on a conference table indicates that everything east of New Orleans has fallen to the infection. Once the Survivors get there, however, things aren't much better.
  • Zombie Gait: How individual zombies walk until they see you.
  • Zombie Infectee: Not only does he turn into a zombie mutant just before you can open the door, but he also calls a horde of zombies with a church bell just before that, the bastard!
    • Better safe than sorry...
    • Also implied by one of Bill's lines in the Death Toll campaign: "Poor bastards barricaded themselves into the city. All it must have taken was one infected."
    • Originally, the Helicopter Pilot from the No Mercy finale would imply that he had been bitten, and the next campaign would begin at the helicopter crash site. Testers complained that it ruined their sense of accomplishment at having survived, therefore Valve removed the dialogue. The recently announced DLC campaign ''Crash Course" will reinstate this, as it begins at the helicopter crash, and ends where the Survivors start in Death Toll.
      • However, during the finale, you can here the pilot over the radio, and he mentions that he may be late due to an...incident. He later mentions that "you may be my last run".
    • One wonders what happened to the armoured bus...
      • Probably just ran out of gas.

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