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"Oh no, they're shambling at us."
- Casper, Darken[1]
"How many times have I told you? Dead things don't move fast. You're a corpse for Christ's sake! If you run that fast your ankles are going to snap off."
Zombies usually shuffle around with both arms out in front of them, groaning " Braaaaaains" or something similar. * The groan depends on the zombie; vegetarian zombies usually say "graaaaaains", for instance, while zombie plumbers say "draaaaaains", zombie jockeys say "reeeeeeins" (or lots of hideous laughter, depending on the species) and theoretical physicist zombies say "braaaaaanes". It's normally brains, though.
Aside from the groaning, this is not unique to zombies. Mummies usually do this as well, and even Frankenstein's monster has been seen to lurch in this variety of the Unflinching Walk.
Although often portrayed this way in fiction (in fact, it was a fictitious sleepwalker who made this trope), sleepwalkers do not walk like this. They walk with their eyes open. If they did not, they would wake up with a nasty headache, or in the hall after they smack their heads on the nearest sharp corner. There have been accounts of sleepwalkers having held conversations, and sleepwalkers who do chores, get dressed, eat, have sex (an actual diagnosed condition, called 'sexsomnia', often mistaken for rape) and people have even been known to drive their cars while sleepwalking.
It has been speculated that holding out one's arms pointing forward while doing the Zombie Gait derives from the mysticism connected with hypnotism in the past and the fact that to get a person's arm to rise as if without their moving it themselves is one of the easiest suggestions to perform.
This is probably somewhat counter-productive, as moving slowly and announcing your presence is a brilliant way to scare off potential prey. (Although, if a Zombie virus needs a bite or scratch to infect, the best way to transmit that virus is to attract a mob of zombies from all directions. This does not apply to non-virus zombies or omnirevenant zombies however.)
Then again, may be justified as the undead's damaged muscles might make basic locomotion a chore. George Romero in a 2008 interview indicates his reasoning for why zombies are slow and cannot run. On top of that, since zombies can shrug off most things that would incapacitate a normal person and there's so damn many of them that even slow ones can be quite a threat to our plucky heroes (unless, of course, they have Bottomless Magazines).
Nevertheless, these zombies can often jump at protagonists from out of frame in a Deadly Lunge.
Examples:
Anime
Comics
- Zombies in Blackest Night avert this. They're not only fully mobile, they have superpowers!
Film
- Trope Maker: Cesare from The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, although he can run when he needs to, and he is, of course, completely silent. It being a silent movie and everything...
- Most zombie movies. It would be easier to list exceptions:
- 28 Days Later, although they're actually "infected" and not the undead, but close enough...
- And the sprinting zombies from the Dawn of the Dead remake.
- It's also important to note that what we now call "zombie movies" pretty much started with Night of the Living Dead. Before then, zombies mostly shuffled harmlessly around on Haitian sugar-plantations.
- Or, for that matter, The Return of the Living Dead.
- Even older example: Nightmare City.
- Most early mummy movies, subverted in The Mummy (1999).
- Note that The Mummy also plays it straight at points. Imhotep is fairly slow when first brought back, and only gets up to speed once he's been restored. Similarly, his mummy priests are slow. Otherwise averted, though.
- In the Animated Adaptation of The Mummy, they perform a Lampshade Hanging. "I thought mummies were slow and dumb!" "Trust me, this one's fast and smart."
- Played straight in the Resident Evil movies until the third where Umbrella creates fast zombies.
- Used with plant zombies in The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham. The eponymous creepy, flesh-eating plants not only walk with a slow, shuffling movement, but have a sort of stick-and-drum arrangement capable of producing a rattling noise... which, you guessed it, calls hordes of other Triffids.
- Also been used as a Flanderization—Frankenstein's monster (who is made of corpse parts, but usually not thought of as undead) walks this way in the bad sequel Ghost of Frankenstein because a botched operation has left him totally blind. Thereafter, it became a defining mark of the character, even though later movies returned his sight.
- Actually, he had been walking that way since the first movie, though he did not say "brains".
- Near the end of Friday The13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan Jason develops a Zombie Gait after getting toxic waste hurled into his face - he stumbles around bumping into walls in a pretty comical fashion.
- Let's not forget that beginning in Part VI, Jason is in fact a zombie, and yet displays very few of the classic traits of the walking dead. He doesn't shamble, he's lethally intelligent, and while he rarely moves at more than a brisk walk, he is clearly capable of superior speed. Pretty much the only true "zombie" traits he follows are the rotting flesh and extreme resistance to/ignorance of physical damage.
- Played for fun in Shaun of the Dead, where the protagonists mimic zombie gait to fool other zombies.
Literature
- Lampshaded in Max Brooks' novel World War Z - the groan of a zombie attracts other zombies to living humans - who, once they hear the groaning and sense the presence of living humans, also begin to groan, thus attracting more. This can have the effect of attracting hundreds, thousands or even millions of zombies to one position, depending how the chain-reaction of groaning travels and how many zombies are in the vicinity and able to pick up on it. Despite their traditional slow-moving walk, this also has the result of effectively destroying the morale of any defenders and causing complete panic; you might deal with the zombies right in front of you, but there could be the zombified converts of an entire city's population right behind them.
- When Windle Poons becomes a zombie (an intelligent one) in Reaper Man, he just feels like walking with his arms out in front of him, though he doesn't know why.
Live Action TV
Music Videos
- Completely subverted in the music video for Thriller.
- The zombies of Jonathan Coulton's "Re: Your Brains" are well-spoken and intelligent, but are still quite insistent about eating your brains. (There is at least one zombie groaning and mumbling in traditional fashion during the chorus, but even he manages to keep in tune.)
Real Life
- People have been known to organize "Zombie Walks" for charity and/or fun, where people dress up as zombies and shamble through the streets.
Tabletop RPG
- Walking Dead in Dead Lands RPG are smarter than they look (being demons from hell animating corpses). So they pose as slow, stupid zombies... And then they eat your brain out.
- The last time rules for zombies appeared in Warhammer 40000, the zombies would always move as if they were going through difficult ground to represent this gait.
Web Comics
- Averted and played straight in The Zombie Hunters, in which the groan-and-shamble zombie is just one of seven possible classes. Other zombie classes (Hunters, for one) are faster and more agile than an ordinary human.
- The Cyantian Chronicles averts this hard. The Cyantian Fox, a little smaller, slimmer, and much faster than a human, becomes a fast attack feral harbinger of death if infected with The Plague, a government "experiment" Gone Horribly Wrong. While the infected die rather quickly, there is a day or two of instinctively running around mauling everything that moves. Those that were lucky enough to fight off the infection died from their wounds inflicted by the others. It is so effective that 99.94% of the entire Fox population gets wiped out in their empire.
Web Original
- The zombies in I Am Not Infected exhibited the traditional Zombie Gait until recently, which stopped them from being threatening. Lately they've learned to run.
Video Games
- The Resident Evil series plays this trope completely straight... up until Resident Evil 4. Los Ganados can run, use weaponry, and speak in complete sentences, and are much more interested in killing Leon than eating his flesh. Justified in that Los Ganados are not actual zombies, but parasite-infected villagers controlled by the leader of an evil cult.
- Also, the first Crimson Head the players encounter in R Emake, which also scatters the powered-up zombies about [Crimson Heads are made if the zombie was disabled but not killed]. You also have the Tyrants and Lickers.
- The MMO Urban Dead both plays this straight and averts this - zombie characters walk only half as fast as human characters until they buy the Lurching Gait skill.
- Urban Dead also plays the zombie groan straight. Feeding Groan is a purchasable skill that can only be used while in the same room as human characters, and is heard farther away when more humans are present. The most common use of it is to alert other zombies as to the whereabouts of juicy brains.
- The ReDeads of The Legend of Zelda franchise (most notably Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and their reincarnations, Gibdos, in Majora's Mask) both play this trait straight and avert it: they walk slow as molasses, usually accompanied by a low kind of thrum sound, and then they SHRIEK and as you're paralyzed, they reach and set about apparently RAPING you.
- Ordinary Sims allow commands to walk, run or skip to a certain location. In The Sims 2: University, Sims that have been brought Back From The Dead as zombies can only "shamble."
- Half Life's zombies follow this trope; in HL2 however they do have fast zombies along with the slower types.
- In the recent zombie invasion stage in World Of Warcraft, players infected by the virus become zombies...who move very, very slowly. However, they do have an ability, "Lurch!" that removes snares and other movement-speed reducing effects, and allows you to run for a short period of time. Additionally, they have "Zombie Groan!" which draws near-by NPC zombies to you, as long as they are not in combat.
- Subverted in the game Left 4 Dead. EVERY zombie can sprint at you with considerable speed (*slightly* faster than players...). Unnerving with the regular hordes, pants-wettingly terrifying when the muscle-bound super "tank" zombie sprints at you — and knocks over several vehicles en route. Again, though, these are Infected and not undead. If you observe an Infected that hasn't spotted you yet, however, they do shuffle around like traditional zombies up until the moment they make a dash for your face.
- Subverted in Dead Space, where the Necromorphs move really fast, even if you cut their limbs off. The twitchers (soldiers with time-altering gear who got turned into Necromorphs) amp things up to Super Speed. Ouch. Probably NSFW.
- Played with in Stubbs The Zombie, where the protagonist and his horde are surprisingly fast despite their haggard stride.
- The zombified Stalkers in STALKER - Shadow of Chernobyl are slow, but still remember how to use their assault rifles and are annoyingly accurate with them.
- Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem plays it not too over-the-top. But that doesn't change the fact that it's not a relaxing experience having it forced upon one of your many playable protagonists as his story arc progresses.
- The ghosts of people you killed in Metal Gear Solid 3 during the Sorrow's battle do this.
- Averted in Halo. The Flood are scarily swift and agile. They're also smart enough to drive vehicles, even complicated ones such as Covenant carriers.
- Both Diablo games feature varying classes of zombies that fit the trope perfectly. In Diablo II, some of them will poison the player with each hit and/or release a cloud of poison gas upon death, though this poison will not turn the player or his/her minions into zombies.
- Doom 3 features a wide array of zombies, most of which fit this trope perfectly (minus the braaaains). A few are faster than the rest (speed shambling) and usually either wield chainsaws or have been set on fire, but otherwise exhibit similar behavior. Zombie Commandos move quickly (no shambling), don't moan or grunt, and often wield guns and hide behind cover; however, they also don't look human and aren't the result of being bitten by another zombie, so they're arguably not so much an aversion of the trope as they are zombies In Name Only.
- Played generally straight in Plants vs. Zombies, with a few exceptions. Many zombies would rather rely on trickery than speed, such as pole-vaulting over your defenses or riding on dolphins.
- Zombies, shambling with arms outstretched, appear in some of the Army Men games.
- Very subverted in the Darkstalkers games. Leilei and Lord Raptor can run, jump, play basketball, and damn near everything else.
- Used in Fort Zombie extensively. Most zombies have an awkward shuffle that you can outdo with a jog — besides these, there's football player zombies that can manage a brief tackling charge, and "fast" zombies in tracksuits that can manage roughly a jog. They also can't get over obstacles nearly as well as your character. It's highly recommended you use this to your advantage, especially in the early game before you have many weapons or other survivors.
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