The movie's opening will feature a well known song
Snyder might want to do it again after Dawn of the Dead, Watchmen and Sucker Punch, as it's kind of his Signature Style outside of the DC Extended Universe.
- Perhaps another Johnny Cash song like Dawn of the Dead had. "Ain't No Grave" naturally comes to mind.
- Confirmed. The opening credits features a cover of the Elvis Presley song "Viva Las Vegas" by Richard Cheese and Alison Crowe, both having done songs for Snyder films before. Cheese's cover of "Down with the Sickness" played in Dawn of the Dead (probably why he's back here) and Crowe's cover of "Hallelujah" played in the credits of Zack Snyder's Justice League.
There could be visual cues harkening back to that film. And maybe it could provide details on how the zombie plague originated.
- Jossed. It's been confirmed not to be the same continuity.
The reason why Mercenaries are doing a heist during a zombie outbreak
The casino where the movie is set was originally owned by a rich casino mogul but he and his VIPs where forced to evacuate Las Vegas due to a sudden Zombie Outbreak. The good news is that US Government was able to contain the outbreak in Las Vegas and prevent it from spreading further. However, the casino mogul learns the government plans to nuke Las Vegas to permanently end the zombie outbreak. Fearing that his and the VIPs money and fortune will be gone forever (and leaving them bankrupt) once the city is nuked, the casino mogul hires a team of mercenaries to retrieve the loot locked in his casino before the nuke drop.
- Jossed. This is the story he tells to the heist crew (and the safe indeed contains money), but he's actually after a tissue sample from an alpha zombie to sell to the military. The insurance already reimbursed him his losses from the outbreak.
The zombie tiger is actually Mike Tyson's tiger, which the Wolfpack (the Hangover trio) found in the bathroom of their hotel suite in Las Vegas when they woke up not remembering what they did the previous night.
- Jossed. The tiger used to be part of a stage show.
Bly is actually trying to set up the Wards and their team to get killed by the zombies
It'll be revealed that he has some sort of vendetta against Scott, or at least something to gain by leaving them trapped in Las Vegas.
- Jossed. There's Nothing Personal between him and the Wards. He just uses them as pawns so Martin will be able to get alpha samples.
Bly knew who Ludwig Dieter really was, and set him up to be killed by the zombies
As shown by the prequel: Army of Thieves, Sebastian/Dieter had cracked, and robbed all 3 of the previous Ring Cycle safes, all of which are owned by Bly Tanaka himself. As the owner of that safe he could have just given them the access codes and combinations, they would NEVER have needed a safecracker. Bly could have used his resources, and influence, to track down, and locate Dieter, and then decided to let him have his last wish of cracking the Götterdämmerung, knowing he would never actually make it back. As for learning his identity, he could have had Gwendoline tortured for his new identity, and Brad certainly would have sold him out too. This would also act as a call back to both his nightmares about dying to zombies, (which he does, and by the original alpha no less,) and the tragic ending of the Ring Cycle story. Gwendoline may possibly be dead too if Tanaka did get at her.
Valentine (the Zombie Tiger) will be the only zombie that survives past the end of the movie
And it will show up in the stinger, roaring, and outside the quarantine zone to signal the beginning of the end for the rest of the world now when the disease has broken free from its dusty cage.
- Jossed. The infected Vanderhoe is the only known survivor.
Vanderhoe will be the cure for the remaining Zombies having been bit by the Alpha
He doesn't turn immediately like everyone else and survives a nuclear strike, his blood will be the key to the cure and it'll make him the most hunted man on earth with Tanaka looking for him.
Vanderhoe is going to become the next Zombie King and the sequel will be from his perspective.
It'd be cool to see life from the perspective of a zombie and what the world view of a turned victim looks like.
- It could also be Scott Ward, he was bit by Zeus, and technically became an Alpha, and Zeus's headless body is also in the wreckage too, the military would likely have recovered both to begin experimenting anew.
Zeus the Zombie King was a fan of Greek mythology when he was alive.
Zeus the Zombie King served in the military, and he volunteered for a super-soldier experiment in order to impress the Zombie Queen when she was alive.
The zombie outbreak was caused by aliens.
It starts in Area 51, and there's a
Freeze-Frame Bonus of two flying saucers accompanying the convoy transporting the first zombie. It's likely, then, that whatever virus or plague is causing the zombie apocalypse was brought to earth by aliens, possibly as a way to wipe out humanity in preparation for an invasion.
- Not impossible but replacing rational humans with an army of intelligent, super strong, flesh eating savages seems a bit self defeating.
The Time Loop Theory
This one, basically amounting to "Van was right about the heist being an undead version of Groundhog Day", seems to be popular, so even though this troper doesn't fully understand it, here's an entry for people to put evidence under, as well as just to have it on the WMG page.
Dieter and Chambers claim to have never killed a zombie before, but Dieter has uncannily accurate shooting on his first try, and Chambers holds her own like an experienced fighter.
The number four is echoed several times in the film, which has suggested the team (or at least some of them) are on loop number 4; it could also be an allusion to the number 4 being unlucky in Japan, because its pronunciation ("shi"), sounds like death. Some examples from the film:
- The Liberace impersonator counts down from 4 before the music backed carnage in the opening.
- The Las Vengeance team had four members, of which the Soccer Mom does not survive. Maybe there's a loop where someone else dies instead, or all four of them survive and join the heist.
- Tanaka asks the team to meet him at 4:00PM
- The vault is called Götterdämmerung, which Dieter identifies as being part of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (colloquially, The Ring Cycle), of which Götterdämmerung is the 4th movement.
- Dieter's dream heist sequence in the beginning includes 3 AK-47s leaning against the inside of the vault after it's opened, indicating other teams may have been there before. (and maybe that Dieter is on loop 3)
- The nuke is scheduled to drop on Las Vegas on July 4th. It's later pre-poned to July 3rd.
- Dieter counts 3 bullets in his first zombie kill, and Vanderhoe counts 4; this also lends credence to the idea that different team members are on different loops, and Vanderhoe is later the one who proposes the time loop, suggesting some insight garnered from past loops.
- The skeleton key around Maria's lookalike corpse has 3 decorative filigree loops, and Maria's has 4.
Vanderhoe was almost right about the heist existing in a time loop; the movie is actually a
Dying Dream wherein each team member's lives flash before them and their brains repeat and review the failures that tanked the mission. If this is true, then the "army" in the movie title "Army of the Dead" isn't the zombies in Las Vegas, it's the heist team, themselves.
The movie shares a universe with Inception
The Time Loop theory explains why self-professed newbie fighters Dieter and Chambers are magically proficient with weaponry and fighting on their first real mission, if the team retains the skills and experiences they gained from their past loops.
It's already indicated the military has a vested interest in the mission. What other heist film includes backstory with the military using dream technology to train their soldiers in combat simulation? Christopher Nolan's Inception.
The so-called zombie "cyborgs" were simply cosplayers that Zeus zombified.
Zeus infected the horse by smearing his saliva on him/her.
Zeus infected the tiger by drooling on her food
The zombie 'plague' is actually a species of microscopic parasitic aliens that assimilate their hosts, like
The ThingAs mentioned above, the start of the movie takes place in
Area 51 and it's implied that the zombie plague is alien in origin. Considering how the zombies have a hierarchy and culture, primitive as it may be, it's possible that the plague itself is a form of microscopic alien parasite that requires a host to survive and reproduce, and whatever it is that Zeus has inside him is the leader of the species. There is also the fact that the zombies are able to sexually reproduce (at the very least, Zeus and the Queen), adding more to the idea that rather than just being a disease, this is actually a viable form of alien life. They could be the blue things that get sprayed around whenever an Alpha gets its head blown off.
Vanderhoe will become the next Zeus, and the two flight attendants will be his queens
Peters didn't really abandon the team
Remember the chopper she was working on through the whole adventure was in extremely crappy shape, it even broke down when they first reached it. If she stayed there it could possibly have broken down again leaving them stranded there as the nuke hit. She had to keep it active, and thus made a quick lap around the building. Her quote when she came back, was just her being snarky.
We'll get an interquel movie called Sins of the Dead, set in the Mexico City outbreak, fitting the Sin City theme the Vegas setting had, then Planet of the Dead will be the sequel after that.
Brad Cage will become a human
Big Bad in Planet of the Dead.
