YMMV / All of Us Are Dead

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • When Gyeong-su is lured out the window by Cheong-san whistling Auld Lang Syne, was it just because zombies are drawn to noise, or because he was still clinging onto his final shred of humanity and could still recognize his friend?
  • Why does Cheong-san pull Gwi-nam from the flames? To use him as a human shield or save him and end the cycle of bullying?
  • Why did Gwi-nam cry before the final fight? His ego was wounded by Cheong-san's words? A brief moment of remorse?
  • Did On-jo stop being in love with Su-Hyuk after Cheong-san kissed her and confessed to her before saying goodbye? Or is On-jo still in love with Su-Hyuk and she hides it so as not to make him and Nam-Ra uncomfortable?
• Arc Fatigue: The subplot of firefighter Nam So-ju trying to rescue his daughter was criticized for being overly extended, lasting from the second to the end of the tenth episode and involving multiple repetitive plot points, but adding nothing to the story. The latter is made worse by the fact that when So-ju is finally able to reunite with On-jo, he is forced to die just fifteen minutes into the penultimate episode.
• Badass Decay: Nam So-ju was incredibly competent and formidable during the outbreak due to his skills as a fireman. Later, he dies soon after reuniting with his daughter, On-jo, to a horde of zombies less impressive than what he or his daughter have encountered and successfully defended against.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After Lee Na-Yeon intentionally infected Han Gyeong-su just so she won't say sorry to the group for being wrong, seeing Nam-Ra slap Na-Yeon in the face and then Cheong-San pushing her away and calling her a murderer while the rest of her companions look at her with hatred is vastly gratifying because it was what she deserved at that moment. Though it later becomes Cry for the Devil.
  • While it is later revealed that he survives at the end, seeing Gwi-nam being surrounded by zombies and eaten alive in the library as he screams in pain and begs Cheong-San for his life is incredibly satisfying after he already had thrown four other people to the zombies (including one boy mere moments before) and told Cheong-san to beg for his life as he tried to kill him.
  • But the deaths that are more satisfying than terrifying? That of each of The Bullies. After the hell they put Jin-su, Cheol-su, and Eun-ji through, they each end up receiving brutal deaths for their actions. From the beginning Hyeon-ju is the first victim of the Jonas virus, then Chang-Hoon receives a brutal bite in the face and finally Myeong-Hwan, the leader of the bullies, is betrayed by Gwi-nam and mauled by a large hoard of zombies.
• Fridge Horror: when the streamer enters the daycare in hopes of hiding there for the night before he is chased by a horde of zombified todlers, the fact that the virus so far has been transfered through bites, these kids where likely abandoned there by their caretakers and left to die a awful death before reanimating as zombies.
• Complete Monster: Both the original and TV versions of Yoon Gwi-Nam are absolutely monstrous:
  • Original: Yoon Gwi-Nam is a smug sexual deviant who was infamous for raping a classmate in middle school, only becoming worst once he was rendered impotent by the girl. Throwing a teacher into a house of zombies to escape and gluing a girl's eyes shut to sexually harass her, Gwi-Nam immediately accepts his role as a murderer, having a teacher and student drop to be eaten to death simply for kicks. Once he becomes a Hambie, Gwi-Nam mauls his partner in crime, Min Eun-Ji, and begins to stalk the halls for women, harassing and murdering them while using their parts for food. After a confrontation with Park Mi-Jin and Jang Ha-Ri, where he kills the latter's brother and attempts to force the girls to fight with their clothes off, Gwi-Nam hunts down the girls for revenge for escaping his grasp and injuring his hand, planning to murder their entire group as he sexually assaults and eats the women for his own pleasure.
  • 2022 TV Adaptation: Yoon Gwi-Nam here is portrayed no better than the original. Starting out as a cruel bully who exploits, beats, and sexually humiliates his peers, Gwi-Nam uses students as bait to escape zombies and murders his principal. After being bitten by the zombies, Gwi-nam becomes a hybrid who relentlessly hunts his enemy Lee Cheong-san and murders and tortures every student he sees with sadistic relish, devouring or turning others into zombies. Upon finding Cheong-san, Gwi-nam doesn't care if all the other students are torn apart as long as he gets to torture and kill his nemesis.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • While he created the Jonas Virus and thus caused much of the deaths in the series, it's quite easy for viewers (especially those with children too) to understand why teacher Lee Byeong-Chan created the virus in the first place. His son was an innocent boy who was mercilessly harassed by bullies even when he tried to change it schools several times. In the flashbacks in which it was shown that he tried to ask different authorities for help, they just ignored his pleas and they allowed their son to continue to be hurt to such an extent that one day Jin-su tells his father that he wants to end his life, to the clear sadness of her father. After Jin-su had attempted suicide to end his pain, Byeong-chan was so broken that he created the virus in desperation so that Jin-su could defend himself from people who hurt him.
  • Despite her horrible behavior earlier in the series, it's hard not to feel bad when Na-Yeon meets a bloody death at the hands of Gwi-nam. After Na-Yeon not only begins to feel remorse for causing Gyeong-Su's death but also remembers the sacrifice her teacher made to save her and tries to bring food to the other surviving students to apologize and fulfill her teacher's last wishes.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite his early death, Han Gyeong-su quickly won the hearts and sympathy of fans due to his bravery, nice personality, loyalty to his friends, and heartbreaking death which, according to all fans, is more than undeserved.
  • The teacher, Park Sun-hwa is quite a popular side character due to being a Reasonable Authority Figure and being one of the few adults who genuinely wants to help and protect the students during the Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Nam So-ju's sidekick, Kim U-sin has gained his own fanbase despite being a fairly minor character thanks to his Undying Loyalty to So-ju and being one of the few Pretty Boys in the series.
• Epileptic Trees: There many people who speculate that Nam-Ra and Park Eun-hee might be daughter and mother. Nam So-ju mentions Park Eun-hee being a mother who puts her job first, while Nam-Ra hints that her overbearing mother is a difficult person with impossible high standards that pushed her daughter to smoke in order to cope with the stress. One may thing is impossible because the characters have different surnames, but in South Korea, when a woman marries someone, their last name remains the same but the child will take the father's last name.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Unsurprisingly, there's an obvious overlap between All Of Us Are Dead fans and Train to Busan fans. It definitely helped that the show name dropped the movie when the students realized that they are dealing with a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • With the anime Highschool of the Dead too, given the similarities between the shows and the fact the latter will never get finished because its author, Daisuke Satō, tragically passed away from heart disease in 2017.
  • With Squid Game due to Lee Yoo-mi starring in both shows.
  • Also with School-Live! (or more accurately, the first arc of that series to be exact) due to having the same premise, albeit a bit more light-hearted and less actionized.
• He's Just Hiding: Many, many, many fans believe this to be the case with Cheong-San And Gwi-nam. Especially the former, given as they fall, one can clearly see Gwi-nam start to burn and turn orange but not Cheong-san.
• Ho Yay:
  • Quite a bit between Cheong-San and Su-Hyuk, given their playfulness and tendency to touch each other. At one point, the former is holding onto the latter while they're hanging from a makeshift rope. Su-hyuk jokingly asks Cheong-san if he likes it and doesn't get a denial, only a laugh.
  • Mi-jin and Ha-ri are also popular since the former tends to stand up for the former and at any perceived disrespect. Mi-jin also comments on how cool she thinks Ha-ri is, even stating that Ha-ri is just her type and how much she wants to be her friend.
• Iron Woobie: Despite being presented as cold and almost without feelings, Nam-ra is particularly tragic. She had an overbearing, verbally and emotionally abusive mother who never saw Nam-ra as good enough. As result, this pushed her to exceed in everything she did, earning the ire of her classmates, who saw her as snobbish and unapproachable. The stress of her situation led to her closing herself out from others and turning to smoking to cope. And although she may project an image of stoicism, this is far from her true self. This facade cracks when she sees the death of Gyeong-su, whom she visibly cries for despite knowing how she was hated by her peers. And all this without mentioning all that she has to suffer after becoming a Hybrid.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains
  • Guess who is most despised; the zombies who are just mindless beings who just kill for no reason or the Bullies who abuse others for sheer pleasure, the Principal who is a Dirty Coward, and most of at Hyosan High School teachers who are such nasty people that they don't even care for the welfare of their students? It's the latter three.
  • Gwi-nam is the closest thing the series has to a Big Bad due to him being a ruthless and vengeful thug who feels no remorse for his actions. However he is perhaps the most popular character in the series due to him being an interesting villain from Evil Is Cool. On the other hand, Alpha Bitch Na-yeon is hated because she is cowardly and selfish even willing to murder someone innocent just to be right.
  • On the adult side, General Jin Seon-mu and Professor Byeong-Chan, despite being responsible for most of the deaths in the series, are considered Well-Intentioned Extremists. While the congressmen have not killed a single person but they are absolutely despised due to their selfishness in wanting to use the zombie apocalypse to improve their political position.
• Jerkass Woobie: Ji-Min has many moments of angry abrasiveness, doesn't do much to help the others, and runs away rather than help her best friend at one point. However, it's very difficult not to pity her as she sees her parents dead and zombified after they came to the school to try to save her, talks about how a school transfer opportunity she passed over could have saved her family, gets left behind by the helicopters when she's a few feet from rescue, almost got her and her friends out of the city where the zombies are, and then gets surrounded by zombies in the dark while crying for her mother. All of this, and the contrast to the happy person she was before the Zombie Apocalypse, makes her a very sad character.
• Love to Hate: Yoon Gwi-Nam is a despicable bastard whose cruel actions as the school bully initially starts the zombie apocalypse in the first place and is willing to kill others to accomplish his petty goal but his actor, Yoo In-soo's performance is spectacular when portrayed with a charming attitude which not only made the actor's popularity skyrocketed but also made us enjoy hating the villain's guts!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Gwi-Nam, the guy who always falls.
  • Ji-yeong died in Squid Game only to return as a bitch.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Gwi-nam is a gold mine for this. Bullying and even sexually harrasing several students to the point of them attempting suicide? Throwing four people to the zombies before he becomes a hybrid? Gleefully infecting multiple students with the virus? Torturing Cheong-san in front of his friends? He's done it all.
  • Na-yeon infecting Gyeong-su just to be "right". Even after her remorse, some fans refused to give her any sympathy when Gwo-nam killed her.
  • The general ordering the soldiers to shoot the kids even though they clearly were not infected.
  • Eun-ji killing Cheol-su, leading to the survivors being left behind. She also tried to kill Cheong-san simply because he picked a phone so they could get help.
• Narm:
  • Byeong-chan holding the bible up before beating his son with it can come off unintentionally funny due to the melodramatic framing and how on the nose it is.
  • The scene where Gwi-nam throws a knife at Cheong-san's back as he chases after him to kill him is done too melodramatically to take seriously.
• One True Threesome: Or foursome, in this case. Su-hyeok/Nam-ra/Cheong-san/On-jo isn’t a very popular ship, but it does have some dedicated fans.
• The Scrappy: Despite being one of the main characters, Seo Hyo-Ryung is one of the characters that annoys or irritates some viewers the most because she is a Flat Character with no purpose in the series. Not only is she one of the students who least helps or acts in fights, but she is constantly a Damsel in Distress who has to be saved or serving as The Load when the rest of the survivors try to flee from zombies. Whenever there are times when her friends were in danger or in times of distress, this is somewhat adverted in a small way because unlike Na-yeon, she actually can be seen in the backround trying to help, some veiwers are annoyed by The fact that she survives to the end of the series unlike other much more interesting students like Gyeong-su, Ji-Min, Wu-jin, and Joon-yeong doesn't help either.
• She Really Can Act: Lee Yoo-mi was absolutely praised by the viewers for her capability to make them cry for such a tragic character as Ji-yeong, yet make them Love to Hate her as Lee Na-yeon, being a proof of her versatility as an actress. The sheer fact that she managed to turn around a character that could have otherwise remained a total Hate Sink with a redemption arc and Cry for the Devil moments based almost entirely on her body and face-acting abilities is further proof of what she can do as an actress.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Jang Woo-jin/Oh Joon-yeong is surprisingly popular for two characters who only really interact fleetingly, and only really towards the end.
• Special Effect Failure: Park Hee-Su's baby is visibly a CGI or a puppet with CGI.
• Spiritual Successor: The show is basically Highschool of the Dead as a live-action series, sans the excessive fanservice of the anime. Both shows have at the core Second Year Protagonists escaping a high school full of zombies, the handsome guy who has Ship Tease with an upbeat tomboy and an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl, the fat friend being the Plucky Comic Relief, a Rich Bitch with pink motifs, and green uniforms.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • A common criticism about the series is that it establishes a large number of characters to the main cast, but most end up unfocused and with no development on their personalities and backstories. While most of the cast members manage to have A Day in the Limelight, sadly it still feels too little because it's right before the episodes of their deaths and there are even other characters like Wu-Jin and Hyo-Ryung ending without even receiving focus and leaving them as Flat Characters.
  • Gyeong-su was not only a Nice Guy, Cheong-san's best friend and one of the few characters who dared to fight against zombies when the apocalypse began, but he also had an incredibly realistic and identifiable background that with enough development could make him a character on the level of Su-hyeok or Nam-ra. However in the end he is used as a Sacrificial Lion in the same way as On-Jo's best friend (I-Sak) for the development of Cheong-san and leaving him as a waste.
  • Lee Na-Yeon even has a degree of this. While she does subvert the stereotypical token Asshole Victim common to the zombie genre, the fact that she didn't get the chance to have some redemption for what she did was seen as lost potential by some, and a waste of Lee Yoo-mi's incredible acting ability (granted, Lee Yoo-mi was relatively unpopular before Squid Game and this series and she mainly played secondary characters for about 12 years before her popularity rose up thanks to those two series). She presented an opportunity to inject an unique tension and drama into the series centered on trusting a known murderer, and could have been a Foil to Nam-Ra as one of the two most untrusted members of the group.
• Values Dissonance: Some western viewers had trouble believing that the bullies could be let off without punishment when it came to things like physical assault or uploading nude images of classmates that were taken by force, as there was video evidence of the former and in America the latter would at a minimum count as possession and distribution of child porn. ^note Even in the case of distributing images that were not taken by force, minors have been prosecuted in the US. While there are many states that lack robust revenge porn laws to punish someone disseminating nude images originally taken consensually without the subject's permission, if those images are of minors it becomes possession and distribution of child pornography, a very serious offense that can result in a lifetime on the sex offender registry in the entirety of the US. However, in South Korea the law is decidedly more lenient with criminal acts by minors, even violent ones.
• The Woobie:
  • Min Eun-ji's character could give anyone a run for money about whose story is most tragic, especially when her situation is so grounded in reality, not only for South Korean girls who suffered similar abuse, but probably for girls from countries that have a similar approach to bullying as South Korea. She is not the typical Alpha Bitch who hangs out with the bullies, but a girl who stays with them by force, because it can get worse if she ever leaves them. She has been tragic from the moment she was introduced, she is sexually harassed, filmed and threaten to have the video uploaded on the Internet, for everyone to see. And she can't even count on her classmates or teachers, because they tormented her too, and it's implied this went like that for several years. It's so bad that she becomes the only character Driven to Suicide for reasons not related to the zombie crisis. Is hard to blame her for feeling relieved seeing everyone turning into zombies, than happily setting the school on fire.
  • Poor Cheong-san just can't get a break. When the Apocalypse begins, not only is he forced to see his best friend die in a horrifying and brutal way, but he must also be the one who makes sure to try to end his suffering by throwing him from the heights, bearing the blame for the death. When he is finally able to let go of some of the guilt, he sees his dead mother in the front row being brutally beaten by his own friends. And all that without mentioning that he is also constantly forced to escape from a crazy assassin who tries to kill him for pure sadistic pleasure.
  • On-jo starts out as an upbeat and somewhat naive teenage girl, but during the apocalypse she loses her classmates, friends, father, and possibly her best friend since childhood. While some fans find her constant pursuing of Su-hyeok annoying, even they can’t help feeling bad for her.
  • While Dae-su’s mistreatment is played for laughs, it’s easy to feel bad for him when you consider that no matter how much he risks his life to save his classmates or uplift their spirits, all he gets in return are insults about his appearance or lack of intelligence. At one point, he mentions that after auditioning for the school choir, he was told to lose weight.

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