One's a zombie. The other's a human. They fight crime.
Zombie Detective (좀비탐정, Jombitamjeong) is a Korean Drama starring Choi Jin-hyuk and Park Ju-hyun. It aired on KBS 2 on Mondays and Tuesdays from 21 September to 27 October 2020 as a Dramatic Half-Hour.
A zombie wakes up without a name or memories and spends his days in conflict with his hunger for living flesh; over the course of more than a year he trains himself to move and speak like a human being and refrain from eating them. He takes on the identity of a Private Detective and struggles to make a living in the city of Gangrim, then teams up with local Intrepid Reporter Gong Seon-ji to solve mysteries and piece together his own past in the process.
The series was produced and promoted entirely in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic as South Korea was one of the few countries to respond quickly and efficiently enough to curb the contagion, at least during the first wave.
Tropes (and spoilers) are bad for your mental health.
- Actor Allusion: This isn't the first time a not-quite-human Choi Jin-hyuk has been enthusiastic about finding rabbits in the woods.
- Badass Longcoat: Standard outfit for a detective like Kim Moo-young. Bonus point for forcing us to watch the pitfalls of something catching on that coat.
- Betty and Veronica: Moo-young, much to his dismay, is the Veronica to
- Wang Wei's Betty and Kim Bo-ra's Archie. Wang Wei gets the girl.
- Cha Do-hyun's Betty and Gong Seon-ji's Archie.
- Do-hyun is also the Archie to Gong Seon-ji's Veronica and Bae Yoon-mi's Betty.
- The Cameo: A long list, but here are some notable ones:
- Members of K-pop group A.C.E play part-time employees at Daehan Tripe Restaurant, notably in episode 2 when they dance to 2PM's “Heartbeat”.
- New Zealand-born comedian Sam Hammington makes an appearance as a butcher in episode 5, along with his son William.
- Running Man star Yoo Jae-suk appears in one of Lee Tae-kyun's movie posters.
- Camera Fiend: Det. Kim, Lee Seong-rok, and sometimes Gong Seon-ji.
- Chekhov's Skill: Gong Seon-ji's aptitude at shot put is put to good use when she has to stop Moo-young from running amok.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Invoked. Before he died, the real Det. Kim gave his keys to a zombie, enabling the latter to fake his identity and later solve the case the former was on.
- Death of a Child: The Santa Claus case.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: For much of the series you have just the Title Character trying to look alive, just until the final arc of the series when we find out he's not the only one.
- Fate Worse than Death: Moo-young considers being a zombie as this. He lightens up when he sees hope that maybe he could go back to being fully alive.
- Genre-Busting: Not easy to pin down genre-wise due to the way the series mashes up tropes of Detective Fiction with Comedy, Slice of Life, and, well, zombies. Certain points off the series parodize saeguk and chaebol dramas, and its lead character even makes a point of voicing his thoughts about all of that.Dramatic dramas are bad for your mental health.
- The series also categorizes itself as Fantasy but the final arc, focusing on how zombies came to be, has a bit of a Science Fiction streak.
- Genre Savvy: Tae-kyun, big time. All his knowledge of zombies usually ends up as film research, but pass it on to Gong Seon-ji and her boss and it's a lifesaver. Not that he knows why.
- Moo-young as well, thanks to Tae-kyun's B-Movie and a survival guide book. Needless to say the two bond over the role of the zombie in narratives.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Pixellation is used over depictions of eviscerated animals and large knives. Other scenes like stabbings and shootings play it straight, with a few shots just showing the blood spilled but rarely the extent of the damage on the body.
- Horror Hunger: Moo-young defies this with a passion and goes to extreme (if not hilarious) lengths to avoid eating humans.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: What Moo-young wouldn't give to be a living human again.
- Inner Monologue: How the zombie narrates the series.
- Leitmotif: There is one playing whenever Moo-young discovers something suspicious, particularly relating to his past.
- Standard Snippet: The first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Moonlight sonata plays whenever Moo-young has an existential crisis.
- Love Makes You Evil: The Santa Claus murderer badly wanted to replace the family that he lost in a fire around Christmas early in his life.
- The Shadow case. Noh Poong-shik synthesized the serum that turned Kang Min-ho into a zombie simply because the vet wanted to bring his wife Back from the Dead. The abductions were to feed her.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: As it turns out, there's even more to the illegally buried medical waste that Det. Kim was after.
- My God, What Have I Done?: All over Moo-young's face every moment he snaps out of his zombie instincts, though most ardent when he recalls his involvement in the Santa Claus murder case.
- Seon-ji upon hearing that her interviewee for the Santa Claus case was attacked.
- No Dead Body Poops: At least one person has tried to discuss this, but to no answer. Moo-young does take baths though.
- Once More, with Clarity: Several scenes get repeated to reveal more details left unnoticed previously. Best shown when the prologue shot of the medical waste spilling onto the grass is re-run to emphasize the liquid spilling towards a dead hand with a broken watch sticking out of the earth.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Zombies here are pretty much corpses who retain a bit of their humanity upon resurrecting but can hardly grasp the rest without learning to reintegrate with humans. They can survive on animals as a not-too-satisfying substitute for human flesh. If they starve for too long they black out, and then all hell breaks loose. Luckily for everyone in Gangrim, no Zombie Apocalypse.
- Revenant Zombie: Two, Kang Min-ho and especially Noh Poong-shik who redeveloped his zombie serum after taking blood samples from Min-ho; the new serum turned Poong-shik into a zombie just as smart as Min-ho within a far shorter time span.
- Perpetual-Motion Monster: Quite a few people have wondered why Kim Moo-young never seems to get tired, fall asleep, or need to go to the bathroom.
- Pet the Dog: Literally with Hodu the chihuahua.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Seon-ji is the red to Moo-young's and Do-hyun's blue, but is the blue to Seon-young's red.
- The World King duo: Lee Seong-rok (red), Wang Wei (blue).
- Reverse Whodunit: Det. Kim's own murder, whose culprit the zombie easily remembers.
- Separate Scene Storytelling: Tae-kyun's movie proposals get a dose of this, sometimes taking up a sizable fraction of a half-hour episode. Comes with a Universal-Adaptor Cast, too.
- Show Within a Show: Quite a few, but special mention to Tae-kyun's B-Movie Fast Train to Busan.
- Sleuth Dates Cop: Though Cha Do-hyun and Gong Seon-ji have their moments together, they hardly have feelings for each other as they put work before anything else. Seon-ji's sister Seon-young constantly talks about getting the two to marry, but ultimately stops as Do-hyun reciprocates feelings for his colleague Yoon-mi.
- Slice of Life: Has shades of this. Without the missing cases shaping the story arcs, this would mostly just be about how a zombie has to adjust to regular urban human life.
- Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: Type II. Moo-young's stab and gunshot wounds don't heal, but he doesn't easily show signs of rotting, either.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Moo-young easily grows aware of his pennilessness and so struggles to find a way to make ends meet while keeping contact with humans at a minimum.
- Tainted Veins: Much like the corpses in Warm Bodies.
- Tap on the Head: Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain is the obvious kill method, but if you want to keep your Friendly Zombie alive, a hard smack at the back of the head will do.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Tripe. Moo-young sees an opportunity to be human when he awakes from Horror Hunger blackout having feasted on a pack of tripe instead of a living animal, and sticks the foil pack on the wall as a motivator. Heck, he grows a huge smile on his face when he hears the sound of Kim Bo-ra's Daehan Tripe Restaurant attracting customers!
- As it turns out, tripe was a favorite of Kang Min-ho, especially when his mother Kim Kyung-ja made him some beef tripe hot pot for breakfast.
- Whodunnit to Me?: The Santa Claus case and the Shadow case turn out to link to the zombie's death and undeath respectively.
- You Watch Too Much X: Moo-young tends to attribute Seon-ji's enthusiastic demeanor to watching too many movies and dramas, particularly romance.
