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Nazi Zombies

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Where's that ray gun when you need it?

Nazi zombies don't wanna eat ya just 'cause they're craving the protein! They do it 'cause...they do it 'cause they hate Americans, man! Talibans, they're the Talibans of the zombie world!
Brandon "Badger" Mayhew, Breaking Bad

A particular Sub-Trope of Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot that has seen a rise in popularity from the late 2000s onwards. Nazis are a Villain by Default, so one way to make them even more evil and scary is to have The Undead bear the swastika. If it's just for the sake of Rule of Cool, this trope overlaps with both Everything's Deader with Zombies and Gratuitous Nazis.

So why are World War II-era Germans so often depicted as shambling corpses? Well, this fantastical association between Nazis and zombies presumably flows forth from the Nazis' rather comprehensive Final Solution policies in regards to racial and ideological enemies. There is also the Obviously Evil use of skull imagery on uniforms, and a history of occult societies in Germany that were supported by some members of the Nazi Party. If there's any faction in World War II who are believable as undead monsters in fiction, it's the Nazis.

Like other zombies, how intelligent they are varies from depiction to depiction. If intelligence is on display, there's usually just one or two commanding officer types leading a rabble of more mindless soldier type zombies. Sometimes, though, they're all just a mindless horde who are less "Nazi zombies" than they are "zombies in Nazi uniforms," due to being incapable of having a creed more complicated than "go here, eat that." If the latter type, they may not have any loyalty to other, living Nazis, and will eat them as willingly as they'll eat any other living people. If they are intelligent and still loyal to the former Nazi regime, they also serve as The Remnant and may well attempt to establish the Fourth Reich—with zombies!

A rather literal form of Ghostapo. Could be the reason why there's a Weird Historical War going on.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • The resurrected (and very short) Adolf Hitlarious type dictator in Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn leads an army of undead, nearly skeletal soldiers in Nazi-inspired uniforms.
  • Millennium's forces in Hellsing are essentially vampire Nazis, but many of them act more like zombies, and they turn everyone they drain into ghouls like it's a zombie-spreading virus. They do not have the powers of a true vampire due to being mere copies of a true vampire.

    Comic Books 
  • In DC Comics Bombshells, the Nazis do a very ill-advised deal with an Eldritch Abomination to have all their dead soldiers rise as zombies and continue fighting - their demonic partners very quickly turn on them to threaten a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • In one adventure in the Gamebook/Comic hybrid Dice Man, a bunch of Nazis are corrupted by the power of Wotan's Spear into zombies.
  • Fiends of the Eastern Front. During the Stalingrad story, Constanza is running short on men, so he just resurrects some of Richter's squad as zombies to use as Cannon Fodder.
  • In The Legend of Wonder Woman The Duke of Deception makes a deal with the Nazis and starts slaughtering small bands of allied troops using reanimated Nazi soldiers. Wonder Woman makes her debut rescuing allied soldiers from him and defeating him and saving lives is her main goal outside of finding a way to return home and rescue her mentor and mother.
  • One of Marvel Zombies series, the 2012's Marvel Zombies Destroy! is about one of the Alternate Earths infected by the Plague Zombie, Earth-12591, in which Nazis won the WWII... by converting into zombies. Most of the known heroes were infected and zombified so they become part of the Nazi Zombies army. As part of the eradication plan of A.R.M.O.R., Howard the Duck, Ducky Dozen and Dum-Dum Dugan went to this Alternate Universe to stop zombies, but went trapped by them and a zombie version of The Invaders, later being saved by The Suffragists, a bunch of Golden Age heroines that stands as the last chance to this Earth, leadered by Miss America (the original one that fought with Captain America and were part of the Invaders), which has Cap's shield from the deceased version of this Earth.
  • The eponymous 2012 mini-series by Antarctic Press (later compiled in one volume in 2013).

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Jewish main character in An American Werewolf in London has a nightmare where zombie Nazi soldiers burst into his home and massacre his family.
  • Dead Snow is about zombie Nazis guarding stolen gold in a Norwegian mountain, who initially only kill trespassers but continue the war in the second movie when they escape from the mountain. As the title implies, the sequel also features some much more rarely seen Soviet Zombies.
  • A zombie/demon Imperial German soldier with a stahlhelm is seen in Demon Knight. Like all the demons in the film, he has clawed fingers and Glowing Eyes of Doom.
  • The Ur-Example is 1941's King of the Zombies, about a German spy using voodoo rituals to extract state secrets from an American general.
  • The undead Nazi Mooks in the Mockbuster Nazis at the Center of the Earth, although they're Technically Living Zombies. To stay alive, they harvest organs and body parts from victims they capture. Included among their number are a slowly rotting Josef Mengele and Adolf Hitler's severed head attached to a Wolfenstein-like robotic body.
  • Oasis of the Zombies (also known as The Treasure of the Living Dead) involves a group of people fighting off a group of undead Afrika Korps soldiers guarding a treasure. It uses a lot of stock footage from the war movie Overrun! It was re-edited into the later film "Grave of the Living Dead."
  • Overlord is about a group of paratroopers sent in to bring down a radio tower before D-Day, only to uncover a secret Nazi lab creating zombie super soldiers.
  • The rather oddly-titled Panzer Chocolate (or simply Panzer on DVD) involves a zombie SS officer killing off a group of archaeologists one by one, Slasher Movie style.
  • The first two films in the Outpost series are pretty straightforward Ghostapo, with Götz and co. being metaphysical "ghost" beings. Then there's Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz, which shows us the early work of the Lazarus Project. These undead German soldiers are actually zombies. At least one, a zombified SS corporal, is used as a human Angry Guard Dog led around on a leash by his living companions.
  • Shock Waves has people trapped on an island being besieged by the "Totenkorps," an undead legion of SS soldiers who live in the ocean.
  • Zombie Lake, which involves a squad of Wehrmacht soldiers murdered by La Résistance, then dumped into a local lake, coming back from the dead for revenge. This low-budget movie is known for having some of the cheesiest visual effects ever. (For example, instead of actually filming a zombie walking back into the lake after it killed someone, they just copied and reversed the shot of it emerging from the lake, so it walks backwards and water drips upwards.)
  • Zombie Massacre 2: Reich of the Dead. American soldiers versus zombies in World War II.

    Literature 
  • The Adversary Cycle: In The Keep, Rasalom resurrects the corpses of the German soldiers he kills to be his Slave Mooks. After he is defeated, they drop dead again.
  • In "The End of the Pier Show", the skinhead gang that Fred was originally supposed to infiltrate is killed by the evil forces at the pier and reanimated as zombies, with each one dressed in a different sort of Nazi uniform.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Happens in {Good Omens TV} season 2. The Nazi Spies who died at the bombed curch get revived as Zombies for an episode. They retain their intelligence, but eat humans (not only brains)
  • Supernatural:

    Tabletop Games 
  • Naturally, All Flesh Must Be Eaten has plenty of support for using these. Both the corebook and "Worlds of the Dead", a campaign seed sourcebook, feature World War II-based settings involving Nazis unleashing a zombie army. In 2013, a kickstarter even brought the gameline back to life long enough to put out a World War 2 sourcebook, which is actually backwards-compatible with both of the earlier World War II-based "deadworlds", which revolves around turning the 2nd World War into a Weird Historical War when the Thule Society's efforts to bolster the Nazi war machine with the occult unleashes a global Zombie Apocalypse.
  • In Warlord Games' Konflikt '47, the Germans are the only side in the Weird Historical War who notably use actual zombies (the Japanese use robots and soldiers with Intangibility and the Italians have a greater emphasis on Jump Jet Pack-wielding drop-troops. The Russians, through espionage on Germany, have developed "ghouls" of their own, but those are definitely Technically Living Zombies).
  • An available unit for the Germans on Secrets of the Third Reich. Interestingly they are a twist of the "mindless zombie following a smarter leader" type, in that the "smarter leader" is equally brain-dead but has been modified with a remote-controlled mechanism that allows an operator to move him around and the other zombies follow him out of what remains of their memories of military indoctrination.

    Toys 
  • DAM Toys' Zombie Germans figures, which features Nazi zombie officer (Kruger) and soldier (Private Jakob). They appear to be loosely inspired by Dead Snow.
  • Quarantine Studio's Dead Reich series of minibusts, depicting undead German soldiers from different branches of the Nazi military in various states of nasty decay.

    Video Games 
  • Call of Duty: Zombies is the Trope Namer. It was originally titled "Nazi Zombies" and involved the players surviving hordes of Nazi zombies, but the Nazis stopped appearing starting in Call of Duty: Black Ops, and the game mode was renamed "Zombie Mode".
  • Owl's Nest by Pastel Games has you explore a secret bunker containing several of these, the results of failed attempts at Super-Soldier bioengineering.
  • Guns, Gore & Cannoli: In 2, zombified Nazi soldiers can be encountered just outside and within the premises of the Dark Don's Elaborate Underground Base, presumably as a side effect of the zombie poison. In addition, several giant zombies have been modified by the Dark Don Syndicate and the Nazis to fight for them, by grafting advanced wonderweapons and mind control helmets onto them.
  • Medal of Honor: Underground: In the second level of "Panzerknacker Unleashed", "Rotten to the Corps", Patterson encounters and has to fight through a horde of submachine gun wielding Nazi Zombies, who explode upon being killed. On occasion, they attack Patterson with BMW R75 motorcycles.
  • South Park: The Stick of Truth: Nazi zombies are the Big Bad, with almost every enemy after the UFO abduction being at least partly a Nazi Zombie. Besides regular ones you will also find Nazi Zombie rats, dogs and aborted embryos among others. The final boss is Kenny as a Nazi Zombie, which augments his immortality. The trope is actually lampshaded by one character.
    "I hate Nazi Zombies! It's so overused!"
  • Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: Towards the third act, Drake discovers that the lost treasure of El Dorado left a curse that turns people into zombies. Not too long after, him and Elena stumble upon an abandoned Nazi submarine base where he discovers a film reel that reveals one officer transforming into a zombie.
  • Wolfenstein
    • Wolfenstein 3-D sees B.J. Blazkowicz fight Mutant soldiers, risen and experimented on by the insane Doctor Schabbs. The exact origin of these test subjects is unknown but at the end of the day, they're Nazi-engineered zombies, silent and very deadly.
    • Return to Castle Wolfenstein has waves of ancient undead instead, but the Cyborg Proto-Soldiers and Super-Soldiers are very much Nazi-engineered zombies.
    • Wolfenstein: The Old Blood: After SS troops disinter an ancient undead monster, the village of Wulfburg is flooded with a gas which causes anyone who dies to rise from the dead as a flaming zombie. Being a Wolfenstein game, there is an ample supply of dead National Socialists to battle poor ol' Blazko. Additionally, some of the living Nazis that Blazkowicz kills can immediately turn into zombies, making things slightly harder for him (or for their still living former fellows if the player gets tactical about it).
  • Zombie Army Trilogy and its sequel Zombie Army 4 Dead War involves Nazis and zombies, much like the mode from Call of Duty, though with Sniper Elite instead.

    Visual Novels 
  • Big Bad Reinhard from Dies Irae has a whole castle worth of these. The castle itself is also made of them. Though technically they are Nazi skeletons rather than traditional zombies.

    Western Animation 
  • In The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, Suzi X at one point steals the cryogenically-preserved head of Adolf Hitler and ends up being pursued by an army of Nazi zombies. There's even an accompanying song.
    Hey, look at that bunch of zombies, I think they're Nazis, that one had a tongue...

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