Zombie Infectee - Television Tropes & Idioms

Happens unknowingly in Garth Ennis'... strange book Crossed. One member of the party is shot (the titular Crossed are intelligent, just psychotic), and seems to just be in shock. However, there's quite a Oh Crap moment when a scouting party witnesses a group of Crossed soaking bullets in their semen. Cue rampage.

The weird but excellent Zombie Apocalypse/House fic "The Rampant Disease" features an infectee House refusing to let his love interest kiss him because they know The Virus is spread through bodily fluids. (That the story also contains two of the more egregious instances of Die For Our Ship this troper has ever seen detracts slightly, but it's still a great story.)

The Resident Evil movies have examples of good and bad Infectees. Notably, a recurring minor character from the second movie, Ethnic Scrappy L.J, is bitten in the third. What's infuriating about this example is that the movie is set well after the zombie plague has swept through the world, so he couldn't exactly plead ignorance; L.J. had likely seen the same thing happen dozens of times. And yet he keeps his infection a secret, even as he begins to sicken. Once he turns (which inconveniently happens during the big zombie attack), he almost kills The Chick while both are locked in a car, and then infects one of the likable main characters, who does the right thing and takes as many zombies with him as possible in a massive explosion.
- Marvin Branagh of the Resident Evil video game series stretched his death by zombie attack over three games. Chronologically, he is bitten during RE: Outbreak, File #2, he is seen unconscious but alive in RE 3, and ultimately turns into a zombie in RE 2. (Capcom likes prequels.)
  - Then again, Branagh didn't exactly try to hide it, even going so far as to kick your player character out of the room and lock the door in RE 2 to make sure he wouldn't hurt you when he turned. It doesn't work, but not through any fault of his.
  - It doesn't help that he doesn't tell you why he's kicking you out.
Shaun's mother in Shaun Of The Dead, who waits until just before she dies to reveal she's been bitten, explaining; "I didn't want to be a bother."
- Whereas Shaun's friend Ed, after being bitten, does a Heroic Sacrifice by staying to hold the zombies off while the others escape.
The gunman with the, err, "crotch gun" in From Dusk 'Til Dawn hid his rapid vampirization for fear of being killed. Fortunately he was killed without much problem. Unfortunately he let all the other vampires in.
- The character's name was Sex Machine.
  - And he was played by SFX guru Tom Savini.
- On the flipside, badass ex-preacher Jacob is open and frank about the fact that he's been bitten and doesn't have long, and was pretty emphatic in getting his kids to do him in when the same was happening to him.
  - Not that they do before he infects his son.
  - But he was a pudgy, adopted asian kid with little characterization, as opposed to Jacob's pretty biological daughter with the hots for George Clooney's character, so we don't care.
In the 2004 remake of Dawn Of The Dead, pregnant Luda gets bitten. Once her husband Andre discovers the bites turn the victim into a zombie, he sets his wife up in the maternity store, separate from the other survivors. Andre sinks so deeply in denial that he refuses to accept the truth, even when it's obvious The Virus has her; instead he becomes her twisted caretaker. Ironically, Luda doesn't kill anyone, because Andre restrained her when she went into labor (during which she died and reanimated). When Norma discovers zombie Luda, she shoots the undead new mother. Norma and Andre then exchange more gunfire, killing each other. Ana then arrives and shoots Luda's newborn zombie infant.
- Additionally, Frank, once informed that the bites are going to turn him into a zombie, elects to be separated from the others, knowing he will be killed when he reanimates.
- Subverted when Michael gets bitten and stays behind, knowing he can't accompany the rest of the survivors beyond this point. It's not quite a Heroic Sacrifice, but he at least displays consideration for the other survivors' safety. It is instead Ana, the woman Michael loves, who goes into denial, insisting she can help him because she's a nurse, even though she knows full well the consequences and wasn't able to do anything for any of the other infectees in their recent acquaintance.
In the original version, Roger is bitten and knows full well what is coming. He asks Peter to let him succumb, and then wait and see what happens as he is going to "try not to come back". It fails, and his is killed upon rising.
In Land of the Dead not a single infected person hides their status, if they are bitten they commit suicide or die fighting. However, the prize goes to Cholo whom is just about to abandon the city, when he unexpectedly gets bitten. He's been on a zombie-killing team for years, so he knows what's coming. His right hand man asks if he wants to be shot or shoot himself. Cholo chooses neither, but instead goes back to Fiddler's Green, intending to take his flesh-eating revenge on Kaufman.
Averted in 30 Days Of Night, when a widower not so slowly turning into a vampire asks to be killed not only to avoid becoming a murderer, but because he can't stand the thought of being immortal and never dying to see his family in heaven.
- Further averted by sheriff Eben Ouleman willingly infecting himself, and then using Heroic Willpower to fight and kill the vampire leader. Sadly he sacrificed himself by waiting for the sun rather than risk losing his self control and becoming a monster.
- Played straight however when a man hiding under a house slowly turns into a vampire before finding Eben and trying to kill him.
Several people in the Return Of The Living Dead series keep their wits about them once infected. They even find ways to stave off the desire to eat flesh well into the transformation phase, so as to not be a danger to friends and loved ones. This, unfortunately, makes them rather attractive to the government.
Averted in Grindhouse: Planet Terror. Cherry is attacked by zombies who bite her leg off. After getting medical attention, she proves to be immune to the neurotoxic agent causing the zombies, as are most of the other leads. Others, not so lucky, are infected not through bites or scratches, but through the infected smearing bodily fluids on them. Ew.
Mostly avoided in Diary Of The Dead. Everybody who gets infected, or dies they have the wisdom to blow their brains out before they can rise. There were only two straight examples in the entire movie where characters rose after death.
- The very beginning. Gordo gets bitten, and dies. His girlfriend is of course in shock, and claims he might not rise. The group doesn't believe her, but this is the beginning, so they aren't sure, and they leave her to grieve. He does eventually rise, but she reluctantly shoots him in the head instantly, before he cause any trouble.
- Jerk Ass Ridley, who was in the horror movie at the beginning of the Zombie Apocalypse they're blog-documenting, is seen early on partying with his girl. He invites the film crew to come join him because they're perfectly safe where he is. By the time Jason and company get to him, he's all alone and acting erratic, even for him. Only when Deborah convinces him to tell her where everybody else is does it become obvious that he's infected.
- A third example comes from one of the video asides. A team of armed soldiers raid a house where a live family is storing their infected relatives. Over the family's protests, the soldiers open the room where they've been storing the zombies and shoot them, but the father's interference causes the sergeant to be bitten. Incensed, he deliberately shoots the living family members in the hearts so that they will "wake up dead."
While not a zombie plague, in Blade 2 one of the vampire strike team, Lighthammer, gets bit by one of the "super-vampires" and covers it up (suprisingly well considering he's one of the most underdressed members of the team), until he predictably turns and starts gobbling up the rest of his team.
Although not technically zombies, the 'Rage' victims in the 28 Days Later movies deliberately avert this trope; the virus infects and converts it's victims within 30 seconds to a minute, thus preventing them from concealing their condition from those around them. It also ups the tension, as the non-infected have to deal with the victim immediately in order to save their own lives.
- The first movie also offers a potential inversion; after butchering a number of infected, one of the characters discovers that he's somehow received a cut. As there's so much blood — both his and theirs — it's unclear as to whether he's actually been infected. This doesn't stop one of the other characters from instantly butchering him with a machete.
In another vampiric variation, Montoya in John Carpenter's Vampires also hides his own vampire bite. His subterfuge does not really matter, as he gets bitten again later in a less discreet place.
Quarantine involves a news crew and a group of firefighters locked into an apartment complex with a bunch of other people and a zombie infection. They store the infectees in the same room that most of the living people are congregated. Guess what happens?
Averted, then subverted in ZombieLand. Little Rock appears all too willing to take the bullet to avoid being a danger to other survivors but it was just a con to let her and Wichita steal the guys' car and guns.
- Played straight, however, with 406, but to be fair nobody knew about zombies or The Virus. She just thought some crazy homeless guy attacked her. Plus she only says he tried to bite her, not that he actually had.
As the title might suggest, this is the entire point of the movie Carriers. While you don't turn into a zombie, the plague's extreme contagiousness makes you just as much of a threat. After being infected, Bobby plays this trope painfully straight, until being abandoned with a little water and directions by her boyfriend. When he in turn is infected, he initially forces his companions to carry him, and then makes his brother shoot him when they try to escape, rather than leaving him to die a slow death.
This was why they needed to Shoot The Dog in Old Yeller: the title character became a Rabies Infectee.

World War Z makes these a larger threat than the living dead. A zombie is not particularly dangerous to anyone with a gun, but the infrastructure behind an army - zombie-hunting or otherwise - does not cope well with things like mass panic and refugee columns that contain an unknown number of infectees unaware of or unable to cope with the facts. (A bonus: imagine the rumor mill about immunities and cures.) Dogs can smell The Virus, and it freaks them out. In a controlled refugee situation, anybody a dog reacts badly to is taken aside as infected... often to the loud and increasingly histrionic protests of the infectee in question. Uncontrolled versions feature a lot of improvisation, but one option is to separate the zombies and the uninfected with a mass nerve gas attack.
- The nerve gas attack "separates" the infectees out because while the gas kills everyone, only the infectees will stand back up... Ugh.
  - Arguably a case of TruthInTelevision: Some people in the Middle Ages would protect themselves from the Plague by finding a remote hideout and shooting anybody coming too close with a crossbow in order to avoid contact with potential infectees.
- Further, in an aversion, people could become infectees completely by accident or unfortunate happenstance; and would do the right thing. One soldier knew he had to be put down because someone shot a zombie. The bullet went through the zombie, then into the soldier, bringing the infection with it. in Russia this becomes the responsibility of army chaplains, one thing leads to another and the country ends up a theocratic empire.
- Averted when one interviewee tells of a buddy who was bitten and turned into an instant emotional wreck, knowing full well he would have to be put down, making no attempt to avoid the reality but is simply unable to take it standing up. It turns out the biter was a Quisling, someone who lost their marbles on the face of the Zombie Apocalypse and acts like, but is not, a zombie. The victim breaks down crying in relief. Ironically, he nearly dies from a Staph infection from the bite.
- There were rumours of cures, and immunity - mostly fueled by the Quislings, and the fact that it was possible to survive being bitten by one of those, but not by a real zombie. Early in the book, one of the interviewees - a guy who dealt in smuggling people across the borders, mostly by car - mentioned that he suspected a lot of outbreaks in other areas were caused by infected getting out of China through the smuggling routes he and people like him used and then going to ground in the ghettos in other countries. [[He mentions that he regrets letting them get through, on his watch, and that he believes that most of the infectees (and their families) were trying to get out and find a cure - not because they actually believed there was one, or because there was any rumour that one existed, but because they were desperate and clinging to any straw of hope they could find, that they wouldn't have to take that final option.]]
Near the end of Stephen King's short story Home Delivery, itself an homage to the films of George Romero, a member of a group of zombie hunters who help protect a small island community realizes he's having a fatal heart attack, and demands that his fellow hunters shoot him in the head (after he completes the Lord's Prayer) so that he doesn't rise immediately after he dies.
In George Romero's short story Anubis, plunging a knife into the brain of a dead person is part of the funerary rites—-note that Romero revenants are not infected with a zombie "virus", it's just that the bite of a zombie is fatal, and everyone who dies rises.
In Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, like the above, all dead people are beheaded, because they all rise. Also, Charlotte Lucas is infected, marries Mr Collins just so she can have "a proper Christian beheading and burial", and slowly transforms into a zombie. This may be taken as symbolic of how, in the original, she threw away all hope of being truly happy so she could marry a fairly wealthy man and be secure - she's sort of the "living dead". Anyway, in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, staggers around, speaking weirdly, eating disgustingly, and nearly having diarrhea in the corner of a parlor. It turns out that the reason she transforms so slowly is that Lady Catherine has been dosing her with a not-so-efficacious antidote which only prolonged her suffering.

She-Wolf of London has Ian bravely fighting against the encroaching Zombie tendencies. But the longer he goes, the more he's able to do little more than groan, "Hunnnngrrryyy...." piteously. Fortunately, this case of zombiism was a curse that could be reversed.

According to the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (and Warhammer 40000: Dark Heresy), some people who have been infected by Chaos go to steps to have their mutations excised or made less noticeable, out of hope that it'll stop them from mutating into Chaos beasts. It rarely, if ever, works, but they figure it's better than being burned at the stake by the witch hunters.
- FYI: It is not.
The opening fiction to zombie RPG All Flesh Must Be Eaten records the personal log of a scientist who's been bitten by a zombie. Needless to say, it goes in the typical direction, ending with the doctor talking about how h-h-hungry he is...
- One chapter-opening story is centered around a group of infectees, quarantined by the United States government (by the rules of the scenario it's based on, infectees rise when they die of anything after the infection hits). The narrator finds her husband has committed suicide, but refuses to report it to the guards - they were growing apart, and as she puts it, "Before I die, he's going to touch me. One last time."
Zombie Fluxx has a card whose flavor text says something to the effect of "Dude, kill me if I turn into one of those things", and essentially indicates that any cards you have representing human friends have now become Zombie Infectees (or outright Zombies) you have to kill when the opportunity arises.
Like in the Anubis example above, the Neo-Victorian zombie RPG Unhallowed Metropolis features different funerary rites for a world where the dead can easily rise as zombies. The lower classes get an immediate cremation, the middle classes usually have valued steel or bronze stakes that can be used to destroy the brain, and the upper classes can hire professional "Mourners" who are trained to watch a body for three days straight and decapitate it at the first sign that it's getting back up.

In the MMORPG Urban Dead, some players, called zombie spies, go into survivor strongholds and then click the search button or attack until they die, then rise as a zombie and start biting everyone in site. however, accidental zombie infectees can be cured with a first aid kit, because the pandemic zombie virus is actually harmless, it's only the bewildering array of bacteria in a zombie's mouth that is a threat.
- Meanwhile, Z-killers continue to attack other zombies, even after rising as zombies themselves, possibly representing those individuals whose Heroic Willpower allows them to use their monstrous powers for the good of the remaining survivors.
This was a pre-expansion event in World Of Warcraft. To make it particularly perverse, it was extremely easy to get cured- NPC healers were stationed in every city- so the players who did this were basically just doing it for fun. And complaining when they got cleansed by well-meaning players.
- But then It Got Worse, making this trope irrelevant, as the zombie attacks grew more frequent, the NPC healers fewer and further between, and the time between infection and full zombification shorter - from an initial 10 minutes, to five, to one minute - in the larger cities, this made it nearly impossible to reach a healer before becoming a zombie, even if you were trying.
One of the campaigns in Left 4 Dead features a saferoom inside a church. There is an occupant locked inside; having been attacked the last time he let someone else in, he refuses to unlock the doors until you prove that you're not infected — and attracts a massive horde of the Infected by setting off the church bell. If you remain close to the door, you hear him beginning to panic as he realizes that he himself is an infectee; at the end of the sequence he leaps out of the saferoom, fully turned, and attacks.
Resident Evil - There are actually very few examples of this trope in the RE games, the most common being in Resident Evil: Outbreak; an online iteration where dying players resurrect as zombies. The first RE does, however, have a readable journal by one of the Umbrella scientists that degrades slowly as the infection spreads, culminating in an extremely short entry about eating dog food, and how it is good.
- Resident Evil 4 does this, although Leon manages to survive long enough to find a cure for himself and Ashley...why he would want to heal the annoying girl is beyond me. Their case is also a bit different because they were injected with parasite eggs, not a zombie virus.
  - Why'd he save her? It's his job.
- Itchy. Tasty.
Dead Rising has a few survivors that have been bitten or injured by the Zombies. One will shoot himself if you give him a gun, another will refuse to come with you unless you can prove to her that the virus is curable, and there's a Narm filled cutscene of a story character transforming into a zombie.
- Also kinda cool is that any NPC you escort that is killed by a zombie will rise as another zombie. Which can make it quite satisfying when you shoot the dumbass in the head for picking his nose in the zombie fight.
- Frank West becomes a Zombie Infectee on the third day (that is, if you have been following the main quest). He is able to suppress the infection, but only temporarily... After the credits, the message "And yet [Frank] complained his belly was not full." will be displayed.

In The Zombie Hunters, the disease that the Infected have does not out right kill them, but if they ever die from anything else, they will become zombies; so there's no real reason to hide the fact that they have it.
- Although, it seems that that people who have been bitten get "rapid infection", which requires them to be "terminated".
- And there is one character who has been bitten, but the "halflife" (as the zombies call him) has shown no effects other then a large wound. Yet, if ever.
  - It has since been revealed that this character, Charlie, has a reason for surviving the bite...
Happens to Gwynn in Sluggy Freelance. Turns out the zombies were just messing with her about the whole infection thing, though.
This Dinosaur Comic.
Main characters from Weregeek played with this trope when they created Zombie Apocalypse Self Insert Fic These Gooddamned Zombies. First it was subverted when Joel was bitten, took a gun and enter room full of zombies to fight with them, because he don't want to endanger his friends, and then we saw Sarah hiding the bitemarks. This was also subverted, because it was revealed she was zombie from the beginning and lure the rest into a trap.

The Secret Show had a zombie infection that was triggered by certain words when spoken. Oddly, the cure was also certain words when spoken. So people could prevent the infection if they were careful what they said. Unfortunately, the words that triggered the zombie infection were "yes" and "no" for a good part of the episode!
Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go had a zombie infection caused by a Skeleton King floating eyeball. Locking gazes with the eyeball was all it took to become infected. Transformation was instantaneous, so the tension came from people desperately trying to avoid the eyeball's gaze, and running from those who had not been able to avoid looking. This eventually left Chiro the last man standing until the sun came up and killed the vector, which restored everyone to normal.
6teen's "Dude of the Living Dead", had this, when one of "the clones" was infected. Any other character infected was fully genre-savvy and would try to take out some zombies before they go and or make a heroic sacrifice. In one case, a completely pointless heroic sacrifice (think reaaaaly slow zombies).
Parodied in South Park Episode "Night of the Living Homeless" in which a character sitting on top of the community center receives a phone call, that he lost his house, and subsequently asks the other people around him to help him out with a little money, some... "change?", ending up in Randy putting him out of his misery.

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