Our Zombies Are Different - Television Tropes & Idioms

For instance, these zombies follow a hilariously rigid social code.

The word "zombie" originated in the Voudon beliefs of the Caribbean, referring to a body "revived" and enslaved by a sorcerer. (Some of the oldest aspects of zombie appearance are actually symptoms of tetrodotoxin

poisoning, a neurotoxin used in certain voudon rituals.) In this form, it has been known in America since the late 19th century. However, it wasn't until the 1960s that George Romero's Night of the Living Dead attached the word to the living dead who eat the flesh of the living.

As Night was accidentally entered into the public domain due to an error in the end credits, it quickly became the object of imitation and emulation by many other directors. Most zombie invasion stories, even those not explicitly based on Romero's films, follow the same conventions, though there are major points of contention. While Romero is responsible for most of the "general" zombie conventions, the more specific and visible zombie tropes are more often inspired by the later works of John Russo, Night's co-writer. Most zombie movies mix-and-match conventions from the Romero and Russo canons. The Russo canon in particular is the reason most people will respond with "Braaaiinnnns" when Zombies come up in conversation, although he is more or less the only person to use it outside of comedy.

The most common zombie archetypes are as follows:

Type V: Voodoo. The original zombie. Reanimated by black magic. May either do their creator's bidding or go insane and turn into type VF.
Type C: Construct. Similar to Frankensteins Monster, this is the zombie you get when attempting to reanimate somebody/bodies from the dead— With Science, For Science! If they go berserk (which they probably will— zombies will be zombies), they have an almost zero chance of spreading Zombification and creating a Zombie Apocalypse.
Type F: Flesh-eating. Your typical B Movie zombie, it eats the skin, brains, or various other organs from the living, typically turning them into zombies— which makes them a lot like a ghoul, really. Can also be merged with Type V or P.
Type P: Plague-bearing. Created by a virus or occasionally machine or somesuch. These are the zombies that are guaranteed to turn others into zombies due to their highly communicable virus or nanobots or whatever. Almost always merged with Type F.
- Type PS: Parasite: A subtype of Type P, these zombies are created specifically via exposure to a form of parasitic lifeform, be it the only stage or part of a series of mutations. Good for videogames, as the advanced mutations allow for advanced enemies and bosses to still be zombies.
Type M: Mishmash. A combination of diffrent traits.

See also Everythings Deader With Zombies, Zombie Apocalypse, Not A Zombie. Not Using The Z Word happens when creatures that otherwise fit the profile perfectly are not called zombies.

Examples:

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Type V: Voodoo

Anime and Manga

The zombies of One Piece's Thriller Bark Story Arc are a combination of types V and C. They're reanimated by villain Gecko Moria's Living Shadow-based Kage-Kage Devil Fruit. Through it, Moria can steal shadows off a living person and put them into dead bodies rebuilt by Doktor Hogback. The resulting zombies have the personality traits, fighting skills, etc. as whoever the shadow came from.

Comic Books

Marvel Zombies, combined with Type F.
Solomon Grundy, from the DCU and the DCAU, was a mobster who was killed and thrown in a cursed swamp. The curse caused him to reanimate decades later as a soulless, grey monster. Fortunately he doesn't reek due to being a Golden Age GL foe and thus made largely of plant matter.
The hordes of undead raised by the Zombie Priest from The Goon are fairly standard, although a few are capable of speech and performing complex tasks. The Zombie Priest himself isn't actually a zombie, but rather a demon in disguise. There's also Willie Nagel, a friendly and intelligent zombie.

Film

The zombie mill workers in the 1932 film White Zombie, as well as the 1966 Hammer Horror Plague of the Zombies.
One of the few interesting points in the ZZ-grade sci-fi classic The Crawling Eye was the invading aliens' ability to create Type V-ish spies/fifth columnists from the bodies of their victims (well, those they didn't decapitate outright, of course).
Though his original means of resurrection are never specified, Officer Matthew Cordell, after being blown up in the second film, is brought back again via voodoo magic used by a wannabee witch doctor in the third Maniac Cop film.

Literature

The Zombie Master in Piers Anthony's Xanth series creates zombies of Type V. Neither the zombies nor their creator are threatening. Xanth zombies are mostly benign, although when called on to fight they make fearsome opponents. They are not contagious, although they deteriorate, and many suffer from brain-damage as their grey matter decomposes. They result either from the occasional person with unfinished business or from a corpse reanimated by the Zombie Master. Or, in one rather depressing case, the Zombie Master himself after he suicides.
Jim Butcher's Dead Beat pretty much skewers the idea of the Hollywood horror movie zombie, with Harry Dresden himself asking why someone would go to the trouble of working intricate dark magics just to get something that shuffles like an arthritic grandmother and thinks of nothing but brains (not to mention that, say, a zombie dinosaur may well be a much better choice for the discerning wizard). The zombies of the Dresdenverse are pumped full of dark magic to the point that they're stronger and faster than the average human, as well as completely pliant to the will of the necromancer that raised them... provided they maintain the spell, of course.
In the Anita Blake series zombies have to be animated by someone with the power to do so. They are obedient to the person who raised them, and have a varied amount of memory and personality depending on time passed since death, power level of the animator, and quality of blood sacrifice that raised them. Eating flesh will prevent them from decaying as rapidly, but an ordinary competently raised zombie is unlikely to go on a rampage unless they are a murder victim or used to be an animator themselves. The eponymous character's day job (well, night job) is as a zombie reanimator.
The haunts in P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath are a combination of multiple of these. They meet type V in that they are created by the malignant, evil/chaotic influence of Perimal Darkling. Unburned corpses of humans or animals left in areas where Darkling influence is bleeding into the normal world—the Haunted Lands—become haunts. It is, however, also type P in that an untreated haunt bite can turn a bitten human into a haunt. While haunts bite people, they don't seem to do it out of hunger; it's an attack. Haunts are normally stupid, shambling creatures, although they do retain some memory of their former lives, sometimes calling out to the still-living. One character who is bitten and turns into a haunt, though, remains themselves through force of will, and proves capable of continuing to be a productive member of society despite their status.
Walking dead were sent by the Fore to attack the heroes/gamers in the South Seas Treasure game in Dream Park (by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes). Not voodoo, but same idea.
- Also a gloriously-gruesome inversion of the get-bitten-by-brain-hungry-zombie trope. See, some of the walking dead horde were portrayed as twitching and jerking. These are symptoms of kuru, a fatal disease which the cannibalistic Fore contracted by dining on infected human brain tissue. Yes, folks, they'd died, and become eligible for reanimation as zombies, because they'd been chowing down on the brains of dead people while they were still alive!
In A Song Of Ice And Fire, when the malevolant Others kill someone, it reanimates as a "wight," a freezing cold zombie with glowing blue eyes. They are resistant to normal weapons but highly susceptible to fire. Hacked-off limbs continue to move for many days afterwards, but will eventually crumble apart.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels don't follow any of the above rules. As this is completely unrelated to the trope and there are other pages for zombies this probably doesn't belong but... their zombies are completely sentient, and generally maintain their old personalities to every extent. They are basically powered by their will to live; a person who becomes a zombie is generally much stronger than they used to be, being unburdened by all the creakiness of their old body. (Although, if it's not properly preserved, it'll fall to bits, and many zombies are covered in stitches.)
- It should be noted that zombies do not exist in great numbers in Discworld and they're not considered a problem by the living population, although there are prejudices. The novels have featured three zombies as main or recurring characters:
  1. Reginald Shoe, a former romantic revolutionary, who after his death in the Ankh-Morpork civil war (or rather, the last substantial one, in Night Watch, not the civil war) thirty years prior to the present time became a mortuary worker and fervent Death Rights activist and (after the events of Feet of Clay) the first (and so far only) zombie recruit of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. He is a highly valued policeman, known for his calm and laconic humour. To quote Watch Commander Vimes, Reg Shoe was a man born to be dead.
  2. The wizard Windle Poons, who, after his death aged 130 years old (in Reaper Man) became a zombie due to the fact that Death was temporarily not available to take away Poons' soul. The undead Poons had more fun during the couple of days spent as a zombie than during the 100 years prior.
  3. Mr. Slant, a lawyer and president of the Guild of Lawyers. Has no discernible sense of humour. In fact, it is said that the only effect death had on Mr. Slant was that he started working through his lunch break. His will to live originates from the fact that his descendants still refuse to pay him for the case where he defended himself, lost, and was beheaded.
- Though not a recurring character, Witches Abroad features Baron Saturday who was revived as a zombie by a local witch. Other than the method of revival, he doesn't differ from any of the other zombies in Discworld, not going about eating brains or Human flesh or what have you.
  - He just happens to become the embodiment of Voodoo magic, a consciously created god, Expy of our world's Baron Samedi.
- Though in Monstrous Regiment there are the standard shuffling zombie kind in the form of former soldiers in the castle catacombs, being kept alive by the Duchess who in turn is being kept alive by all the prayers sent in her direction as opposed to the Gods. Reginald Shoe actually observes them and says that they could be rehabilitated with some effort.
Mike Carey's Felix Castor series has zombies as ghosts who return in (mostly) their own bodies: one of them, tech whiz kid, Conspiracy Theorist and Deadpan Snarker Nicky Heath, plays a crucial and recurring role, as does his voodoo physical therapist Imelda.
The Inferi of Harry Potter.
The Lifeless of Warbreaker are pretty much treated like robots that happen to be made from reanimated corpses instead of metal. Once created they are perfectly obedient (though most have passwords built into them so that only certain people can command them) and will follow any instruction to the letter, though like real-world computers this often needs to be very specific to avoid Literal Genie moments. They absolutely will not rampage or eat brains unless someone is stupid enough to tell them to. In the nation of Hallandren they are a widely accepted part of society, though in other parts of the world they are regarded as abominations.
Pet Sematary.
The T'lan Imass of Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson are several tribes of undead neandertals who underwent a ritual many thousands of years ago to make themselves undead so that they'd be able to carry out the full extermination of the Jaghut, their former masters, making them closer to the "Voodoo" sort of zombie than the others. In the present day, they've mostly lost their way, with many tibes having been wiped out completely and others simply losing their will to exist, turning them to dust.

Live Action TV

The zombie of the eponymous Kolchak The Night Stalker episode. It takes orders from its voodoo priestess mother, kills mainly by snapping the spine, moves rather fast, and is finally put down by having rock salt poured into its mouth when dormant followed by sewing the mouth shut.
Smallville (infected with a Kryptonian virus).
Doctor Who had a variant on this in the recent 2009 fall special "The Waters of Mars". The type here was of the parasite origin, which converts the human host into a water-spewing, lizardy zombie thing. Rather disturbing in execution, even more disturbing in that it was the front for something far worse.

Tabletop Games

Common low-level monsters, D&D zombies (and skeletons) are nearly always mindless mooks animated by necromancy.
- Unless you've run into a juju zombie from early editions, which are smarter.
- Or one of the variant zombies from 4th Edition, which can have un-mooklike powers.
- Or your DM owns Van Richten's Guide To The Walking Dead, in which case all bets are off.
In Exalted, Abyssals and Deathlords make frequent use of reanimated corpses, though they also often cross over into Type C via Necrotech, which is basically Magitek crossed with this.
In Scion, children of the Loa (both heroic and villainous) can create or recruit zombie servants.
- So can, in fact, all Scions with access to a birthright that grants the Death domain.

Video Games

Warcraft and World Of Warcraft. Which also have aspects of type F (as they can feed on humanoids) and P (as they were created by a plague).
- The undead really fit into all these categories. The trolls have voodoo zombies, which seem to have free will. Abominations and Flesh Golems are constructs, ghouls eat flesh, and there's a plague going around... though its not infectious in the traditional manner. WMG seems to point to a fungal agent that has to be eaten, or straight necromancy (voodoo go!) which can have some strange results.
City Of Heroes has the Banished Pantheon, a voodoo cult who's lowest ranking minions are zombies. They even have Adamastor, a zombie as tall as a skyscraper

Webcomics

In Last Res0rt, if you shatter your soul but don't become a Djinn-si before you die, you become one of these. About the only thing it really seems to do is give you one Get-Out-Of-Death-Free card — you keep your brains, you keep your strength, and your free will.
- The scary part is when someone uses this as a tactical advantage!

Western Animation

Found in an episode of Angry Beavers, in which the eponymous beavers were almost kidnapped by a voodoo witch to be made into some type of elixir. The zombies from the horrible Show Within A Show B-movies the beavers watch will invariably be type F.
The Simpsons.

Type C: Construct

Most RPGs that involve dungeon-crawling will have some sort of zombies as a monster, usually found in the creepy Dark Temple/haunted house/graveyard setting. They may induce status effects, but are treated like any other monster in this case.
- Well, not exactly like any other monster.
Arguably, Frankenstein's Monster.
All of the zombies in the Narbonic Verse, most notably Unity.
The Ur Example of the zombie story, Herbert West - Reanimator, uses this type.
Flesh golems, cadaver golems, and especially blasphemes in Dungeons And Dragons.
Abominations from Warcraft and World Of Warcraft differ from the rest of the plague in that they are pieced together from different corpses, much like Frankenstein's Monster himself.
The zombies from the House of the Dead series of video games are creations assembled/reanimated by sinister baddies, usually in massive numbers. Standard grunts are just reanimated corpses, while the bosses are creatures that have been altered to get a brand new, undead lifeform. One of the few modern examples where the zombies don't spread their undead status to the living; the HOTD zombies just plain murder people. However, the recent House of the Dead: Overkill does feature Type P zombies (or 'mutants' as G insists on calling them) that follow your standard "Bite - Infect - Multiply" pattern, which turns the entire region of Bayou City into a realm of living dead.
- The primary exceptions being the two main characters of House of the Dead EX.
In Blaylock's Homunculus, the eponymous creature can re-animate the dead, including animal carcasses or body parts, by will alone. So can Narbando, though his creations must be fed regular meals of blood pudding to stay animate. Blaylock's zombies are sluggish and mute, but not animalistic, being capable of menial labor in factories or (if undecayed) of begging and handing out flyers in the street.
The Sims 2: University, as a result of a cheap resurrection. The good news is, teen zombies get an Undead Scholarship for university.
- The first The Sims also had zombies included in the first expansion pack. When a sim died and you pleaded with the Grim Reaper, you had a 25% chance of keeping that sim, only as a zombie with no personality points, and a green tint to their skin and clothing.
- The fifth expansion pack, "Unleashed," included an NPC who could "revivify" zombie sims, for a fee of course. Their personalities never returned, however.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has a variety of zombie monsters (including a headless [sub]version), along with necromancers and vampires who share their quarters with corpses, both animated and not. Spells can also be purchased that allow the player to summon a zombie, and the Mages Guild focuses on the extermination of necromancy, culminating in the acquisition of a staff that reanimates the bodies of the recently deceased.
- The Shivering Isles expansion pack introduces new enemies, which includes "flesh atronachs" of varying degrees, and skinned hounds. A "summon flesh atronach" spell can be obtained, and a skinned hound is the reward for one of the random quests. Furthermore, the player can spend quite a lot of time fighting the living impaired (including corpses that only reanimate when approached), and can even assist a charming woman in the parts selection (and subsequent rebuilding ritual) of a very large opponent.
- The zombies also carry disease which the player can catch if they fight the zombie. But none of the disease will turn the user into a zombie, they're just normal diseases, since, you know, a rotting corpse isn't exactly the most hygeneic thing in the world to be around.
City Of Heroes also has the Vahzilok, a group of doctors that kidnap people off the streets and turn them into mindless, stitched up zombies.

Type F: Flesh-eating

The "Living Dead" series, including Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, Day Of The Dead, and Land Of The Dead. Though never called "zombies" in the series (Romero originally referred to them as "ghouls"), the living dead in this series became the starting point for Hollywood zombies. They walk and move slowly, have very rudimentary instincts, and are driven most by the instinct to feed. They can only be stopped by destroying their brains. Over the series, their attributes are gradually expanded upon. In Dawn of the Dead it's discovered that they are drawn to places they knew in life, such as malls. In Day of the Dead it's discovered that zombies can be trained to use tools and can be coaxed to remember aspects of their past life. Land of the Dead takes it all much further, showing that the dead can communicate with each other, empathize with each other, cooperate, and solve problems, suggesting that they are replacing humanity. Anyone who dies in the living dead world will become reanimated. Zombie bites are fatal, thus causing victims to reanimate after they die.
Shaun Of The Dead zombies are generally of the Romero type.
The Return of the Living Dead series riffs off the Romero series, but changes the zombies to make them much more dangerous. Decapitating the zombies will not stop them, and this change is lampshaded by one character, who cries, "You mean the movie lied?" Zombies maintain a roughly human-level intelligence. They can run and speak as well, provided they still have the right parts. They are driven to feed on human brains because it temporarily eases the pain of being dead.
Final Fantasy XI has the Qutrub, which are actually people who have fallen to the Lamia who willingly turn themselves into zombies, and they eat flesh to stay in one piece. They are noted for being extra-weak to all damage, yet also have far more HP than most other enemies.
I Am Not Infected has the classic Flesh Eating/Plague Bearing combo. That can drive cars (poorly).
The Max Brooks books The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z attributes the zombie outbreaks to the fictional virus "Solanum", described as being highly contagious and 100% fatal. Victims attempt to attack and consume living prey, even though this is not required as the virus warps the brain into a new organ that does not require food, water or even air to survive. Zombies can only be killed by destroying the brain - decapitation merely results in a head that can still bite and feed, and freezing them solid only works until they thaw out again.
Resident Evil's T-Virus turned the brain to mush, stripping them down to basic instincts and an insatiable hunger, on top of killing them.
The Middleman has perhaps a unique example of the Flesh Eating variety, selecting a very unusual type of flesh to eat. Nowhere else will the zombies cry not "Braiiiiins", but instead "troooooout".
In The Goon zombies are usually flesh eating and may be created by either mad science or voodoo depending on the story. They also may or may not be sentient. Also may or may not be evil. In fact zombies are really inconsistent in the series.
Dead Rising: Aspects of F and PS. Though... how exactly does trying to mass-produce cattle end up making a wasp that turns people into zombies?
- Capcom wrote the plot. Any other questions?
In the movie Demons, the eponymous creatures are basically type F and P zombies, with a bit of demon in them.
Cemetery Man: Type F, for the most part. Would also be Type P, except the dead in the town are coming back regardless of how they die.

Type P: Plague-bearing

Type PS

The various games in the Half Life series all have small creatures named Headcrabs that attach to people and turn them into "Headcrab Zombies". In this game, again, unless you immolate or seriously damage the body or kill the headcrab, the zombie keeps on going. If you hit the body wrong, you can kill the zombie but leave the headcrab alive, which has a long jump as well as a crawl. Or the zombie's body is cut in half, and the torso continues to crawl at you. There is also the Zombine, a Combine Overwatch Solider infected with a Headcrab, which is a fast armored zombie that has a grenade he can try to clobber you with, making him an unwitting suicide bomber.
- The Poison Headcrab Zombie, bloated and swollen with toxins and carrying four venomous headcrabs, as well as the Fast Headcrab Zombie, which climbs up drainpipes to reach you on rooftops, can jump across streets and entire buildings as it hunts you, and pounces with a pants-wetting scream. Oh, and all its skin and most of its organs and muscles are missing, most probably self-inflicted. *Twitch*. *Tremble*.
- The utterly terrifying sounds the Poison Zombies make when they breath... and, of course, that god-awful but thankfully hard-to-hear little chuckle they release just after being killed. That's right. They laugh quietly to themselves when you kill them.
- The most terrifying part: well, at least normal zombies seem to keep awareness of their condition. That's right, those rotting, mutated, living bodies still house human minds. Which beg for mercy.
  - "Oh god help me! Why?! Why?!"
Infected in Infected (the book) are infected by plants, which embed themselves in the skin and dig their roots into the bone (and eventually, to the brain), causing massive mental shifts (such as insanity and uncontrollable rage).
Resident Evil 4 has plague-bearing individuals with creepy crawlies in their heads who are certainly not zombies, despite having loads of zombie tendencies.
- Compounded in Resident Evil 5, with improved Las Plagas, making them even more aggressive, and with a boost in strength and speed, to boot.
Halo Flood, while Not Using The Z Word, is an alien parasite with a Hive Mind, whose small 'infection forms' can infect dead or living bodies (including intact Flood corpses) and basically make a zombie with funny red antennae sticking out of its upper body. There's also enemies - and much of an entire level - that are pure Flood biomass. Once the infected are too damaged to fight, they begin to bloat and explode, releasing more parasites, which go on to infect other and so on and so forth. They're intelligent, if somewhat suicidal in tactics, and are perfectly capable of using the weapons and vehicles they used while they were alive.
Dead Space: Necromorphs.
Slither.
The Monster Of The Week from the Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars is explicitly stated to be a water-borne parasite.
The recent creation of the Black Lantern Corps in the Blackest Night storyline sees wide swaths of DCU characters being transformed into zombies by Black Power Rings. They are nearly unkillable, vaporizing them proves to be only enough to stop them for a few seconds.
- Also, unlike most other kinds of zombies, these zombies are massive dicks who like to point out all the flaws and shortcomings of the people they are attacking while they are attacking them.
- The parasite ultimately turns out to be Nekron who uses the power they collect from victims to resurrect himself.

Type M: Mishmash

The zombies from REC are a type M. They're infected by a virus made by Satan.
Zombies in Doom 3 seem to have aspects of several types, they are flesh eating (dead bodies and immobile zombies) but do not attempt to bite the player, they are not contagious, having being changed by spirits from hell and the go straight from alive to undead in most cases. Most civilian zombies are slow moving and have low intelligence but military zombies are faster, more agile and smarter. They also have a vulnerability to wounds to the body, head shots are not required, neither it seems are heads, as several zombies wander around without them.
Heretic 2 zombies are former townsfolk that have been driven mad, sickened or prone to violence by a magical plague, however it seems they cannot spread the disease, plague bringers are needed for this.
Metal Gear Solid 4. Well, not exactly, but half-way through the game, when Liquid represses the Mercenary Army's nanomachines, causing their emotion and reason to flood back into their brain, the PM Cs in the area are brain damaged. Guess what? They shamble, moan, and are pretty much Classic-Romero zombies, to the point of mindlessly rushing Snake (and not reacting to any sort of stimuli). There's no biting or undead stuff, though.
The zombies from the web comic The Zombie Hunters. They are created by a virus, but there are 7 different zombie subspecies with their own traits and behaviors, including some that don't even eat people. These include the old fashioned, slow, mindless, people eating Crawlers. Howlers are also slow and look just like Crawlers, but emit a a cry that causes nausea and vertigo, giving them a chance to catch up to their prey. Basilisks have a similar gimmick, as like the Redead from Ocarina of Time, they paralyze someone with a look and then eat their face off while they are helpless to move or speak. By contrast Berserkers are relatively intelligent, very fast, and highly sadistic. They only bite people after having beaten and tortured them completely senseless and travel alone or in small packs. (Thankfully, Berserkers are the rarest type.) Hunters, like Bersekers, are fast and solitary, but their specialty is in silently stalking a chosen victim for long periods of time (even weeks) from cover before ambushing them for a standard zombie kill. Spitters can spit a highly acidic and contagious substance onto a target from about 50 yards away. Lastly Mercies are strangely gentle and only approach targets that are sick, injured, or already dying. They inflict a single lethal bite, then hold and comfort the dying victim, even protecting them from other (less merciful) zombies.
- Also, The Virus itself is slightly different, because while you can be infected by a scratch or contact with zombie blood or saliva, as long as you're not bitten the virus remains dormant has no effect. Only when you die (regardless of the cause of death) will you reanimate and become one of the undead. Presumably, you can live as long as anyone else like this. People bitten, on the other hand, will die within days and turn very quickly after death.

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