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Plants Vs Zombies is an incredibly addicting Tower Defense game from, believe it or not, Pop Cap Games. That's right, they actually made a game that's not a puzzle game. And a damn good one, too. It's about plants fighting against a zombie invasion.

Zombies have risen from their graves, and seek to eat your brains. However, you find a most unlikely, but trusted ally in your own front lawn as you plant various organic defenses against the undead legions, and are also given advice and supplies by your neighbor Crazy Dave.

The zombies won't go down easily, however, and are constantly thinking up new ways to breach your defenses, including screen-door shields, pylon helmets, pole vaulting, and zombonis that pave the way for an undead bobsledding team.

Yeah, it's that kind of game.

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Plants Vs Zombies contains examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo - The main attack you have is peas. Lots and lots of peas.
  • And the butter from the Kernel-pults is abnormal even by the standards of the game...
• Action Bomb - Several of the plants, most notably Potato Mines.
• Affably Evil - The zombies. They even send you notes, although they turn up a little late. And when you win, they decide to make a music video with you instead. And then get back to invading your lawn.
• Arbitrary Skepticism - The sentient English-speaking puff-shroom had trouble believing in zombies.
• Awesome But Impractical - Most of the "upgraded" plants in any mode besides Survival, especially Cob Cannons, as the round will in all likelihood be almost over by the time you can afford a few. However, in Survival mode, many of them are not only useful but vital.
• Berserk Button - DO NOT destroy Newspaper Zombie's newspaper.
• Big No - Said by the human owners of the house you're defending when the zombies get past your line of defense. The Game Over screen.
• Black Magic - Plantern isn't gonna say that is the source of his unusual power.
  • Then again, how would YOU go about explaining how you take in darkness and create light from it without confusing the person asking?
• Blatant Lies - "Any resemblance between Dancing Zombie and persons living or dead is purely coincidental"
• Brainwashed And Crazy - Hypno-shroom does this, though it seems to think of it as being More Than Mind Control.
  • If successful, the Hypno-zombies will move on to eat other zombies.
• Bullet Seed
• Bigfoot Sasquatch And Yeti - The Yeti Zombie that only appears in the New Game Plus.
• Comes Great Responsibility - Magnetism is something which scares Magnet-Shroom in its power.
• Clown Car Grave - Averted and played straight. While night levels do have graves, each one only summons one zombie per level. Played straight in "Whack A Zombie".
• Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: A very subtle one in Tall-nut's Almanack entry, where he describes the brotherly bond between him and Wall-nut in an interview.
• Dark Is Not Evil - The appearance of Grave Busters fits with their purpose, devouring tombstones, yet both they and Doom-Shrooms are on your side. Even though Doom-Shroom's warning makes one doubt it.
  • The Tangle Kelp is also a little creepy with its glowing squinty eyes... basically a less-goofy-looking version of Tangela, though its Flavor Text in the Suburban Almanac mitigates this with a spot of humor.
• Demonic Spiders - Gargantuars are large, powerful zombies that can instantly kill any plant, and can deploy a small, albeit weaker zombie deep into your defenses.
• Ear Worm - ''There's a zombie on your laaawn...''
• Epileptic Trees - Unless Word Of God states otherwise, the eerie green glow from the drains around the cemetery is coming from whatever toxic substance's causing the zombies to rise from their graves.
• Exactly What It Says On The Tin - Plants are fighting zombies.
  • Also, the Peashooters and Squash.
  • And nearly all the zombie names.
• Facing The Bullets One Liner - From the Gatling Pea almanac entry:
  "But honey, (joining the military) is dangerous!"
  "...Life IS dangerous."
• Final Exam Boss - In the last level, you have to remember what plants do what kind of damage to fend off the final boss' attacks.
• Fragile Speedster: The Imp in the puzzle game I, Zombie. It can only take three regular pea shots before being defeated, but is the fastest (and cheapest) unit you can deploy against the plants.
• Frozen Face - Perhaps for the pun, Ice-shroom has a non-dramatic version of this. It being the reason he is a Perpetual Frowner.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: The dancing zombie was designed as a clear Shout Out to Michael Jackson. About a month and a half after the game came out, he died.
  • "Any resemblance between Dancing Zombie and persons living or dead is purely coincidental". Ouch.
• Game Breaker - In the flash version's survival, the fume shroom and sun shroom combo becomes this at night. Sprinkle the cake with Grave Busters and Wall-nuts for success and profit.
• Game Breaking Bug - This troper doesn't know if it still happens, but he and many other players have reported the game corrupting one's save files numerous times in a row. You'll quit the game, load it later to play again, and find that the game forgets you've done anything.
• Gatling Good - The "four at a time" Gatling Pea.
• Giant Mook - The Gargantuar.
• Grievous Harm With A Body: One of the Gargantuar's possible weapons is another zombie.
• Grumpy Old Man - Imitater says that all they had in the Zombie Wars were guts. Guts and a spoon.
• Humongous Mecha - The final level has a giant zombie mecha that shoots fire and ice balls. And it's fucking awesome.
• Highly Visible Ninja - Tangle Kelp thinks of himself as invisible. Not so much.
• Hurricane Of Puns: Incredibly Lame Puns - And plant-y of 'em!
• Improbable Weapon User - The Gargantuar flattens your plants with a lamppost, a street sign, or another zombie; Dr Zomboss' Humongous Mecha throws vehicles at them.
• Ironic Nursery Tune - The Jack-in-the-Box zombie plods along, cranking a box that's playing Pop Goes The Weasel...and explodes.
• Keet - Coffee Bean sure does get excited.
• Kill It With Fire - Among the methods are blazing peas, chili peppers and exploding mushrooms.
• Man Eating Plant - No men, but Chompers chew up and swallow a fair bit of zombies.
  • They look suspiciously like purple piranha plants from Super Mario.
    • Or Audrey
    • Well, at least Chomper tried to audition for the part...
• Meta Powerup - the Twin Sunflower and Coffee Bean
• Mind Screw - Flower Pot being a plant in which you plant plants attempts to induce this in you with the flavor text.
• Mook Maker - A zombie that dances and spawns four others that follow it. Also, the final boss.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate - Dr. Zomboss has a doctorate in Thanotonolgy. (That's the study of death. Thanatos is Greek for death.)
• Never Heard That One Before - Snow Pea gets a lot of this.
• New Game Plus - Once you beat Dr. Zomboss, you can start all over again with the seeds you've gathered so far - only Crazy Dave gets to pick three of them, the second playthrough.
• Nightmare Fuel: (Jack-in-the-box Zombies They explode too)
• Night Of The Living Mooks - EVERY SINGLE ENEMY that your plants fight is a zombie. Period.
  • Check your almanack. Zomboni's an alien that often hangs out with zombies and is frequently confused with them
    • Also, robots aren't zombies.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot - The zombies have not only mastered many professions such as deep sea diving, pole vaulting, and football, but There's an actual giant zombie bot at the end. A zombie *in* a robot. With a doctorate in Thanatology, no less.
• Nuke Em - Cob Cannons are not in fact cannons but corn-missle launchers. And those missles a VERY destructive. Also Doom-srooms.
• One Hit Kill - Some of your plants, namely the Cherry Bomb, Potato Mine, Squash, Doom Shroom, Tangle Kelp, Jalapeno Pepper and Cob Cannon are capable of killing almost all types of enemies in one hit. Some of the enemies, most notably the Humongous Mecha Final Boss are also able to do this to your plants!
• Pinata Enemy - The Zombie Yeti.
• Portal Network - The minigame "Portal Combat" has you fighting zombies while a somewhat confusing system of portals(Zombies ready to stumble into the gateways are fired upon by plants infront of the corresponding portal, for example) shifts around the field.
• Psycho For Hire - "The Doom-Shroom would have no qualms about destroying your house instead. It wouldn't be hard, or so he claims."
• Punny Name - Almost any plant.
• Raising The Steaks - "The dolphin is also a zombie."
• Rule Of Cool - Sure, most games give you a plot, but in this case you're going "Ah, crap, zombies are attacking my lawn!" too much to notice its absence.
  • Actually, the plot's decently defined, although just the game's name sums it up pretty well. The plot is zombies are attacking your lawn and you and your plants have to defend it. Pretty straight forward.
• Rule Of Cute - Applies to both the plants and the zombies.
• Rule Of Fun - Similarly, who cares where all these genetically modified war-plants came from? (Answer: Bloom & Doom Seed Co. If it kills zombies, then all is well and good.)
• Shout Out - One of the plants is called "Torchwood"
• Speaking Simlish - Crazy Dave
  • Although, depending on how you look at it, it's less "Simlish" and more "He's crazy enough that he's no longer actually speaking anything but gibberish, but you've known him long enough that you can translate". It does amount to the same thing, though.
• The Stoic - Lily pad is described as this.
• Spikes Of Doom- Spikeweeds/Spikerocks. Partially subverted against normal zombies as it will not kill them instantly but will drain their health over time as long as they step on them. Played straight against vehicle enemies.
• Stone Wall - The Wall-nut and Tall-nut serve no purpose other than defending your easily-killed attackers by taking damage for them. And they sure can take LOTS of it.
• Twitchy Eye - Jack-in-the-box Zombie has quite a strong one and has the chills from his insanity.
  • Wall-Nut gets one when he's taken enough damage, poor guy.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Sun is the form of currency, dropped from the sky on day levels and produced by Sunflowers and Sun-shrooms.
• Zombie Apocalypse - Now in Jock, Salaryman and Dolphin flavor!

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