Attractive Zombie

Here comes the bride... it’s too bad she died.

Zoe: [to Dirge] So... if she's a zombie, too... why does she look so... you know? And you look so, well...
Nephthys: Men always let themselves go, sweetheart. Even the dead ones.

— Xombie

Like ghosts and vampires who were only recently romanticised and portrayed as humanlike in many aspects, zombies were traditionally depicted as horrifying, creepy, ugly, mindless and carnivorous. The reason for this lies in the concept of zombie originating from Caribbean voodoo, in which they were corpses reanimated by a magician and subjected to his will, devoid of their own will and personality.

However, since the late 1990s zombies have increasingly been seen as not so much different from humans, and even as sexual figures. Nowadays, the depiction of a zombie as sentient, humane and seeking equality with humans is a frequent metaphor for real-life discriminated groups and for the de-objectification of them; to amplify the effect, he or she may be portrayed as physically attractive and sometimes even in a romantic relationship with a human. Another source of this trope is the old legends and Gothic fantasies about undead beauties, which have been reimagined in the light of modern zombie lore.

Moreover, while vampires represent the archetype of a corrupt aristocrat, zombies, with their tattered clothes, bare feet, wild desires, and freedom from social conventions, can be associated with hippies and similar "alternative lifestyle" subcultures. For this reason, such characters often have nonconformist and taboo-breaking (sometimes sexually nonconformist) overtones. Their attitude to their undead status may vary: some of them dream of becoming human or of resting in peace, while others are perfectly happy being the way they are, and find advantages in it (sometimes they would even refuse to become living humans again when given such a possibility).

Most of these characters discard the conventions of zombie lore settled by George Romero (since eating flesh and brains is just somehow... unsexy), instead appealing to older undead archetypes, like Voodoo Zombies, Revenant Zombies, and the aforementioned undead beauties from Gothic-era stories. In the most general sense, "zombie" may apply to any living dead creature that is not incorporeal, does not drink blood, and is not wrapped in bandages.

This trope only applies when the said zombie is described as attractive and/or as a romantic interest to humans in-universe.

Sister Trope to Seductive Mummy and Cute Ghost Girl, and frequently overlaps with Boy Meets Ghoul. Compare with Vampires Are Sex Gods, Hot as Hell, Succubi and Incubi, Cute Monster Girl, You Sexy Beast, Incongruously-Dressed Zombie. Frequently overlaps with Friendly Zombie, due to Beauty Equals Goodness, and Revenant Zombie, due to the fact that such characters often retain the personality they had in life.

For more examples of this trope, check out a thematic category on The Other Wiki.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Several characters in Cinderalla qualify. Cinderalla's father becomes a zombie and marries another zombie who has two zombie daughters. And Cinderalla herself falls in love with a zombie singer, and needs a spell to transform herself into a zombie in order to be allowed to attend one of his performances.
• Necrowaif's Flesh Golem receptionist from Interspecies Reviewers is remarkably cute for a quantity of mutilated corpses held together with crude stitching and large screws. In the manga, she even quips that her bust was willed to her by a friend who finally went to Heaven, Igor style.
• Made in Abyss: Riko was stillborn in the depths of The Abyss, but was revived through a Relic. She still looks like an adorable little girl despite this.
• Zombina the MON close-quarters specialist from Monster Musume. She's an attractive redhead with mismatched eyes and patchwork skin (since her body doesn't heal naturally, she has to attach new body parts to herself by sewing them on). Her Friendly Enemy, the Jiangshi Shiishii, also qualifies; practicing Tai Chi every day to stave off rigor mortis left her looking quite toned.
• Victoria Cindry from One Piece has blue skin and stitches covering her body, but overall looks much more appealing than the other zombies in Thriller Bark; many of them lack lips, some have lost an eye, and several are stitched with animal parts or even inanimate objects. The Mad Doctor Hogback joined the zombification business because he wanted to bring back Cindry, but when she ended up with a different personality from the shadow used to animate her, he only cared about her appearance thereafter.
• Rea from Sankarea looks identical to how she did as a human after being zombified, the only physical differences being paler skin and red eyes (they were blue as a human).
• Zig-zagged in Zombie Land Saga. The zombies of the main cast are sweet girls who are normally just as cute out of their prosthetic makeup as they are in it, but that's just for the convenience of the artists; in-universe, people stumbling across them out of it (including Sakura, when she briefly thought she was still alive) is followed by their sunken eyes and cheeks and veiny, marbled, cyanotic skin becoming very apparent.
  • This works in their favor in ''Revenge's'' penultimate episode; after having accidentally being seen without any makeup by a crowd (mostly made up of young kids), they think they're screwed and admit that they've been hiding the fact that they're zombies... however, the kids don't think the group are zombies, because zombies are "scary, bite-y, and dangerous", while Franchouchou aren't. This allows Ai to play off their appearance as "zombie makeup", but behind closed doors, they all admit that it was a really close call.

Comic Books

• Gwen Dylan, the Revenant Zombie protagonist of iZombie is only marked as undead by having a slightly more purple skin tone to the still-living human members of the cast, although she states she lives with the possibility of turning into a regular rotting zombie if she doesn't get her regular ration of brains.
• Deconstructed in the short story "Look Alive" from Vertigo's The Unexpected, where a Revenant Zombie is able to pass for an attractive woman, but has to adhere to a strict regime of mental and physical exercise in order to do it.
• Dead Girl, the Revenant Zombie superhero from X-Force (Milligan & Allred), initially looks a little mummified, but quickly becomes Progressively Prettier to the point that she becomes a sex symbol in-universe, and has a sexual relationship with living teammate Anarchist.

Films — Animation

• Emily from Corpse Bride is not technically a zombie until near the end when she and Victor use a spell to return to the land of the living, but she is a corpse who's walking around and talking, so close enough. She's also conventionally attractive by the standards of the movie's art style (she still has most of her skin, unlike everyone else Victor encounters in the Land of the Dead, for one thing) and very much romantically interested in Victor.

Films — Live-Action

• Army of the Dead has the "Queen" zombie, a former showgirl who, even with her Nightmare Face, still looks attractive, especially with an outfit that shows off her cleavage and her legs. There's also a bunch of topless showgirls chasing a guy and rabidly devouring him in a jacuzzi in the opening credits.
• The Battery contains a scene in which one of the main characters begins masturbating at the sight of a not particularly horribly decayed female zombie that is ineffectually trying to break into his car, smooshing her breasts all over the door window in the process.
• The Bride: Baron Charles Frankenstein, Dr. Zalhus, and Frankenstein's assistant, Paulus, attempt to create a female mate, Eva, for his creation. The team of scientists succeed in creating Eva, who is physically identical to a human and lacking the deformities of the monster. As such, she is revolted by the monster and rejects him. This causes the monster to fly into a rage and destroy Frankenstein's laboratory. Frankenstein, believing the monster has died, flees with Eva back to Castle Frankenstein. There he falls in love with her and, with the help of his friend Charles Clerval and housekeeper Mrs. Baumann, educates her with the goal of making her a perfect human mate.
• Bride of Frankenstein: The Bride is meant to be conventionally attractive, as she was built by the Doctor to be a suitable wife for his earlier creation. Just like her mate, she's assembled from stolen corpses.
• The 2008 movie Camille is about a girl who becomes a Revenant Zombie after her death, and wins the heart of her husband (who originally married her only for personal profit reasons).
• Pretty much all of the revenants brought back by The Crow retain the attractiveness that they had in life.
• One of the DVD extras in Dawn of the Dead (2004) is an in-universe news broadcast containing, among other things, a video of some high schoolers taunting a young female zombie wearing nothing but a football helmet and Black Bra and Panties. One of the guys can be heard saying "look at those melons" and that "she is the hottest girl in the school." They learn very quickly not to mess around with any kind of zombie.
  • A Deleted Scene in the film proper has a fully nude blonde woman walking past Anna's car in the highway, but it's unclear if she's a zombie, a Zombie Infectee, or just under shock.
• Played with in Dead Girl, a horror film about a couple of obnoxious teenage boys who find a teenage girl Flesh-Eating Zombie and decide to keep her as a Sex Slave. Although they obviously consider her attractive enough to do this, she's visibly decaying and scarred.
• The female leads in Death Becomes Her (played by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn) may not technically be zombies, but they're pretty close: they've taken an immortality potion and then suffered a mortal wound. Their bodies are no longer living (so they can't heal from any damage they take), but the potion won't let them actually die. At least initially they're still reasonably attractive, though by the end of the movie they've had to resort to extensive use of cosmetics and despite having had a long time to practice they're not very good at it.
• Tammy in Fido, although she's kept like that deliberately by his owner, in a world where zombies are kept as slaves, you can imagine why.
• Frankenhooker puts a raunchier spin on this, with a medical student who resurrects his dead fiancé by building her a body assembled from local streetwalkers.
• Beth (Aubrey Plaza) in Life After Beth a film about a guy's girlfriend returning from the dead.
• The Return of the Living Dead series:
  • In the original film, the Ms. Fanservice punk chick Trash (played by Linnea Quigley) gets killed and zombified halfway in. Upon her resurrection, a homeless man winds up Distracted by the Sexy when he sees the naked zombie Trash walk out of the graveyard... at least, until she's close enough that the fog and darkness no longer obscure her Nightmare Face.
  • Julie (played by Melinda Clarke) in Return of the Living Dead 3 remains as attractive as when she was alive (albeit turning more "dominatrix-like") as the love story is crucial to the plot. Even prompting a rape attempt from one of the villains—which turns out exactly how you'd expect.
• The male protagonist of Warm Bodies, who falls in love with a human girl after eating her ex-boyfriend's brain.
• Zombieland: Kind-of subverted with Columbus' neighbor "406" played by Amber Heard. She's "insanely hot" as Columbus states, but once zombified, it's Fan Disservice.
• The zombies in Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (2018) are simply humans with green hair and white skin (considering it's a Disney Channel Original Movie, it's pretty obvious why they didn't go with more traditional-looking zombies), and the plot revolves around the romance between the zombie Zed and the human Allison.

Literature

• Ayumu from Is This A Zombie? has at least five girls in love with him (only one of which doesn't know that he's a member of the undead).
• Ayumi, the eponymous zombie little sister in My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister. Unlike most zombies who decay naturally, Ayumi injects herself with preservatives, so she looks identical to a human save for stitches all over her body.
• Generally, "zombie romance" seems to be a growing trend in the paranormal genre. In 2011, the Night Wolf Press publishing house put out a call for submissions in this genre stating: "Ain't no lovin' like undead lovin' - it applies to more than vampires".
• In American Gods, the protagonist's wife Laura is resurrected as this; unfortunately, as the months pass, she rots severely, even despite the embalming.
• Laura Steele from Bone Song by John Meaney; the protagonist has a romance with her.
• The undead girl Tuanne from Conan the Defiant, one of the Conan the Barbarian novels; Conan even has a brief intercourse with her.
• The Country of Comers-Back by Lafcadio Hearn is set in Haiti and features a beautiful barefoot zombie woman who seduces men and lures them to their death.
• Undead in the Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. series typically retain their libido from life, and can remain good-looking if their demise wasn't too messy and they regularly visit the morticians' shop for maintenance. A trio of zombie "cougars" flirt quite aggressively with a living cosmetics salesman in the first novel, and the second openly acknowledges that the Full Moon Brothel's zombie prostitutes are a major revenue source. Dan himself is implied to be pretty handsome for a zombie, occasionally having to turn down passes from female Unnaturals.
• In Dead City, many zombies look like ordinary humans, and can pull off an attractive look. Type I zombies are also Friendly Zombies: they retain their human personality and just want to live normal lives. In particular, Natalie becomes a Type I zombie in Dark Days, and retains her model looks.
• Sally from The Demon Collector by Jon Mayhew is a quite attractive revenant girl; there is no romance between her and the protagonist, but they establish a friendship.
• The high-functional zombie teens from Generation Dead series, most notably Tommy Williams and Karen DeSonne.
• In a teenage novel I Kissed A Zombie And I Liked It, the female protagonist Alley falls in love with a Goth called Doug who turns out to be a zombie.
• Shurq Elalle from Malazan Book of the Fallen really loves to seduce living males. She seems to cherish her undead state (mainly because it keeps her from aging and losing her good looks) and repeatedly refuses the possibility of resurrection.
• In My Girlfriend, the Zombie: A Zombie Romance by Rebecca M. Senese, the main character's girlfriend Sharon is a beautiful and intelligent zombie woman who passes as human.
• The zombie princesses from Once Upon A Zombie series retain their good looks in spite of being turned into undead beings.
• The Fiery Redhead Cate Hendrickson from Paradise Rot, who is the protagonist's Love Interest.
• Paraiso Street features Rosita, a ghost stitched into the corpse of her sister. According to Gallows Charlie, a sorcerer who creates such zombies for cash, the operation gives the dead control of all the corpse’s bodily functions, prevents rot, and only becomes noticeable when they don’t age. This also creates certain issues, in that a person may not be aware that their partner is dead, and that even the dead themselves might occasionally forget it.
• In The Poe Detective Agency series by Brian Yansky, the main character's love interest Julia is a zombie. The novel also mentions that he had sex with a number of other zombie women before.
• The Revenant Zombies from Amy Plum's Revenant series are all quite attractive, and the heroine has a romance with one of them, namely Vincent. At the end, she becomes a zombie herself.
• The 2017 book Romancing the Zombie: Essays on the Undead as Significant “Other” is a collection of essays discussing the increasing use of this trope in modern fiction.
• In Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson, the three undead girls Riley, June, and Dayton, brought back to life by a Wiccan spell, remain as attractive as they were in life.
• The female zombie Lee Ling from Voodoo Killings by Kristi Charish.
• The Returned of Warbreaker are humans who were returned to life by the Divine Breath, and must devour one soul a week to stay alive. They also possess Humanshifting powers, which most of them use to take on whatever particular form of ideal beauty they desire.
• Jane Stitch from Wolfman Confidential is also this, though she's a Frankenstein's Monster rather than a zombie.
• In Xanth novel Dragon on a Pedestal, Zora gradually becomes this due to Xavier giving her The Power of Love.
• In Zombie Noir: The Corpse with the Beautiful Face by Austin Taylor, a beautiful lady hires a private eye to investigate... her own murder. They also share an intercourse.
• Another collection of essays analyzing this phenomenon is Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead by Shaka McGlotten and Steve Jones.

Live-Action TV

• Episode "New Year's Day" of anthology horror series Fear Itself has one, once we learn that Helen (played by Briana Evigan) was a zombie all along.
• In iZombie, zombies in general (as long as they're able to eat enough brains to sustain themselves) look like ordinary people with pale skin and hair. Most choose to disguise themselves with cosmetics. Liv doesn't, but once she gets over being a zombie, it hasn't really affected her dating life (beyond having to take extra precautions to prevent infecting human partners, although she mostly dates other zombies); one of her boyfriends tells her she pulls off the zombie look.
• As the Orphnochs of Kamen Rider 555 are zombies (specifically the Revenant Zombie kind) by their very nature, every single one counts, though that's due to being able to alternate between their human and monster appearances. Especially true of the main Orphnoch cast, including the titular Rider and hero himself.
• In Pushing Daisies, the protagonist magically brings his dead girlfriend back to life; she remains as beautiful as she was in life, but it is strongly implied that she's now a Revenant Zombie rather than human (she doesn't age, calls herself "dead" on several occasions, and is referred to as "dead girl" by several other characters).
• Supernatural:
  • The female zombie Angela Mason in "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" is quite attractive, apart from the "homicidally jealous" part.
  • In "Optimism", Vance was a stereotypical handsome guy before being murdered and Harper still finds him attractive in death, treating him like a typical boyfriend.
• Superwog has an episode set during a zombie apocalypse. Theo and Johnny are accosted by a zombie who happens to be a hot woman with big tits. Rather than attack the lads, she just lets Theo grab her tit...and keep it.
• Whoniverse:
  • Series 9 of Doctor Who ends with companion Clara Oswald Killed Off for Real, but she receives a temporary delay in her death which renders her technically undead with no life functions, though with her personality and soul still intact. This has no impact on her attractiveness; in fact, it is stated that due to her new state, she will never age, therefore remaining as a beautiful woman in her late 20s effectively forever.
  • A minor case in Torchwood when Owen is resurrected as a zombie midway through Season 2. It doesn't do nearly enough to stop a girl in a bar from finding him gorgeous. Too bad for Owen that no bodily function means no more blood flow downstairs.

Music

• Aurelio Voltaire sings about the Zombie Prostitute:

Buck teeth fell out and her tongue fell out to boot

But all in all she was a rotten kind of cute

• "The Zombie Song" by Stephanie Mabey is about a zombie girl falling in love with a living guy during a Zombie Apocalypse.

Music Videos

• My Chemical Romance music video "Helena" has a beautiful zombie girl dancing at her own funeral.

Tabletop Games

• In Exalted, in the Skullstone Archipelago some people kill themselves and come back as zombies in order to preserve their beauty. This honor has to be granted by the bureaucracy, so it is far from common, but there have been instances of it.
• The card game Yu-Gi-Oh! has a series of Vampire-themed monsters that are classified under the Zombie-typing and as typical of vampires in fiction, the majority are depicted as finely-dressed with flawless good looks. That said, their ace card, Vampire Genesis, trades in the looks for power.

Toys

• Since Monster High revolves around the Cute Monster Girl trope, zombies are no exception. Hence, Ghoulia Yelps is one, as well as a Cute Bookworm.

Video Games

• Darkstalkers: While Jiang Shi are considered vampires rather than zombies, Hsien-Ko is, nevertheless, quite attractive for a hopping corpse.
• Disgaea:
  • Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance: One of the character classes is the Maid. More specifically, they're zombie maids. Adorable zombie maids with Girlish Pigtails and Cute Little Fangs. According to their bio, they're not actually very good at housework due to their brains rotting, but many in-universe find them endearing.
  • Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny: Zed might be hated in-universe, but looks good for a zombie. His little sister, Bieko, is also undead but also disgustingly adorable.
• In the final chapter of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, several slain bosses are resurrected as Morphs for one final fight. If Legault takes the field against Lloyd, his former ally and friend, he'll comment that death hasn't taken his good looks, even though it's taken everything else.
  Legault: ...Huh, even as a monster, you are a handsome one, Lloyd. But you know something? I can’t let this continue!!
• Qiqi from Genshin Impact is still an adorable little girl and doesn't look like a zombie aside from her talisman.
• Monster Prom: Brian, the green player character, is a zombie who's quite a hunk in spite of missing a few pieces of skin on his face and neck. Vicky, the blue player character, is a Frankenstein's monster girl who's stitched skin and the bolts sticking out of her neck only add to her attractiveness.
• Shantae: Rottytops is drawn in the same cute anime girl style as the rest of the female cast, albeit with green skin and a stapled on arm and leg. The games establish that zombies are divided between the traditional mindless undead, and those who are able to hold on to decent chunk of their humanity thanks to the power of coffee, with Rottytops and her family falling into the latter category. While Rotty's older brothers are more monstrous, Abner is still a bit of a looker, and there are other zombie NPCs (such as a pair of siblings in Seven Sirens) who look completely normal aside from the green skin and stitches.
• Skullgirls: Although too young and modest to qualify as "sexy", Squigly is an adorable Cute Monster Girl of a zombie.
• Touhou Project has resident jiangshi Yoshika Miyako. Supplementary materials reveal that her mistress, Seiga, has an extensive regiment in place to keep her face cute and her body flexible since rigor mortis poses as big an issue to Yoshika as the biological breakdown of her body does.
• Town of Salem: The Escort and her Evil Counterpart the Consort can become this after dying, since the Necromancer can raise them to Roleblock live players.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1: One of the characters, specifically Shulk himself, is revealed to have been Dead All Along and puppeteered by an ancient malevolent spirit. Despite this, he enjoys a longstanding romance with Fiora, who also becomes this partway through the game.

Web Animation

• Xombie has Nephthys, a Seductive Mummy who is the resident Ms. Fanservice in the show. This is lampshaded in Chapter 5 of the original web series, when Zoe compares her to Dirge (who, while ripped, has a skull-like face).
• VTuber Kureiji Ollie from hololive Indonesia is a zombie virtual idol whose good looks haven't been tainted by undeath. While more conservative than the outfits worn by other hololive members, her dress draws a lot of attention to her shapely legs.

Webcomics

• Mye of Charby the Vampirate has quite a few admirers among short demons and fay. It helps that in many ways her body is alive if not aging and therefore not rotting.
• Skin Horse: While Unity is not conventionally among the comic's "main hotties", she does look good for being a bunch of stitched-together body parts, and she's caught the eye of a fair number of men, women and abominations of science. Even Tip's made his move on her once. (Only to find out that Unity's interpretation of "let's get physical" differed from his.) Admittedly, Unity's not a regular kind of zombie; she's actually a bucket-worth of black goo controlling a dead body, and habitually replaces any parts that get damaged or go bad.
• Orrick from Undead Friend is fairly zombified but manages to remain fairly similar-looking to his human form, so he still comes across as attractive. It helps he doesn't deal with rotting; he just easily loses his limbs sometimes.
• Violet Zombie is about Penelope Mortinez, a teenage girl who was resurrected as a zombie and retained her good looks.
• In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, Kria Soulstealer meets a handsome Undead at a bar and starts trying to get drunk so she won't feel weird for hitting on him.

Web Original

• Less is Morgue has Brains Vincent, a zombie beauty guru with such impressive makeup skills that he practically looks alive. He even invented Zomtouring!

Western Animation

• In Bob's Burgers, this is how Tina views any and all zombies. She frequently writes “erotic friend fiction” stories involving zombies and has romantic dreams about them. Once, she even wrote a school essay about dating an entire zombie basketball team.
• Blanche, the Goth Southern Belle Zombie student of Gravedale High, clearly an example◊.
• Teased and subverted in the Gravity Falls episode "Tourist Trapped". Mabel gets a crush on a local named Norman, and Dipper suspects he's a zombie from his unusual behavior. He turns out to be a bunch of gnomes instead.

---