Basic Trope: A simplistic creature, monster or inanimate object possesses more intelligence than it appears to be capable of.
- Straight: A zombified Alice intentionally leads an unprepared Bob into an ambush.
- Exaggerated: Alice is able to set up complex mechanical traps to catch humans for consumption at her leisure, and plays mind games with her prey to demoralize them and turn them against one another.
- Downplayed: Despite being and acting like a rotting, shambling zombie most of the time, that she can open doors shows that there is a little more going on upstairs than "Bite, kill, destroy."
- Justified:
- The Virus dosen't affect the brain as much as the other parts of the body, allowing zombies to retain a portion of their intelligence.
- The virus is slowly repairing her brain, thus allowing her to slowly regain her mental faculties.
- Alice is actually a Revenant Zombie. She is merely pretending to be mindless so people will let their guard down.
- Inverted: Someone that looks and acts humans turns out to be a philosophical zombie incapable of thought.
- Subverted: Alice appears to lure Bob into an ambush, but then loses interest and wanders off into the corridors...
- Double Subverted:
- ...but was circling around for a surprise attack.
- Alice loses interest in Bob because she heard Carl, Daniellle, and Ezta coming, and is scurrying into position to ambush them.
- Parodied: Alice, despite being a rotting Zombie, knows Shakespeare, still retains the ability to speak coherently, and is a winner of the Nobel Prize despite her infected state.
- Zig Zagged: Alice's' intelligence fluctuates rapidly, as she is both rotting and regenerating at the same time, so the quality of her brain is scattered at best.
- Averted:
- Alice is nothing more than a braindead, flesh-hungry zombie.
- Alice is a person whose intelligence is evident.
- Enforced: The cast regularly face many powerful types of zombies, but not smart ones. The executives want to take advantage of this.
- Lampshaded: "Since when did they start becoming clever!?"
- Invoked: The virus evolves to make the zombies retain higher brain functions and make them intelligent hunters in order for their chances of catching and infecting more victims and thus spreading the contagion to increase.
- Exploited:
- A ragtag band of misanthropic misfits who believe this is what humans deserve discover Alice’s behavior, and begin modifying the virus to increase zombie intelligence.
- Alice is intelligent enough to realize that humans think she's only as intelligent as an animal, and uses Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Defied: Out of boredom, a Mad Scientist decides to make a virus he can test on human subjects. However, he explicitly avoids making zombies smart because he wants the humans to have a slight chance.
- Discussed: “Wait, she can think?”
- Conversed:
- "I think those producers finally realized the heroes wouldn’t have gotten close to dying anytime soon without a serious upgrade in zombie smarts."
- "Damn, the grunting shambling zombie's actually smart? Sounds kind of like you, Eve." "Okay, first of all, fuck you."
- Deconstructed: Because Alice's mind is active, she's more vulnerable to distraction and indecision than she would be if she were operating solely on instinct.
- Reconstructed: Eventually, she wises up to the distractions and learns to ignore them and instead focus her attention on the person using it.
- Played For Laughs: The household hamster secretly rigged the house with traps for the cat, and it's found out in the middle of monologuing like a classic Bond villain.
- Alice and Bob are being chased by a T. rex, when Bob says that it can’t see them if they stand still, the T. rex suddenly pulls out a cup of tea, puts on a monocle, and complains about how offensive that stereotype is in a posh British accent.
- Played For Drama: After Bob leaves her body, unable to bring himself to Mercy Kill her, Alice reanimates as an zombie with little-to-no intelligence. But as time goes on, as residual memories slowly start seeping in and she starts remembering things again, she slowly realises her current state and seeks Bob out, having both grown curious as to why her memories have him in them, and also to provoke Bob into helping her stay dead for good.
- Played For Horror: Bob finds himself at the mercy of Alice the Killer Robot. She would have given him a quick and efficient death before moving on to another human as he thought in his last seconds. Unfortunately for him, the robot decides to take delight in prolonging his demise, laughing as she slowly tears his limbs apart and beat him into a pulp, all while keeping him alive long enough for him to feel the excruciating pain.
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