History Main / EpisodeOfTheDead

** Another Ninth Doctor story, this time the two-parter, "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" features "Gas Mask zombies" which is a very odd ThePlague due to futuristic technology GoneHorriblyWrong, where nedical nanobots find an injured child wearing a gas mask and looking for his mummy. However as these nanobots have never encountered a human before, they assume the gas mask, a scar, and the behavior are a part of the human genetic code. So anyone the boy touches gets infected with this new genetic rewrite whereby they try to 'heal' them. It takes the Doctor finding the boy's real mother and allowing the nanobots to recognize the heritage and what a proper healthy human is like, to repair the damage done.

** Another Ninth Doctor story, this time the two-parter, "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" features "Gas Mask zombies" which is a very odd ZombiePlague due to futuristic technology GoneHorriblyWrong, where nedical nanobots find an injured child wearing a gas mask and looking for his mummy. However as these nanobots have never encountered a human before, they assume the gas mask, a scar, and the behavior are a part of the human genetic code. So anyone the boy touches gets infected with this new genetic rewrite whereby they try to 'heal' them. It takes the Doctor finding the boy's real mother and allowing the nanobots to recognize the heritage and what a proper healthy human is like, to repair the damage done.

** In "The Restless Dead", the Ninth Doctor encounters recently deceased corpses becoming active again and doing things they enjoyed during their life. Turns out these bodies were possessed by gaseous aliens who live in methane environments and could animate the corpses.

* The 2009 CrisisCrossover event ''ComicBook/BlackestNight'' is this for Franchise/TheDCU, having the universe-scale menace of the "Black Lanterns", [[CamebackWrong reanimated corpses of dead people]], not limited to heroes or villains, metahumans or common folks, from every part of the universe. If it's dead, it ''can be'' a Black Lantern [[spoiler:(resurrected included, that count as {{Manchurian Agent}}s)]].
* The first arc of the Rebirth relaunch of ''ComicBook/HarleyQuinn'' features Coney Island citizens turned into {{Technically Living Zombie}}s after accidentally eating alien meat.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Spliced}}'' episode "Bite, Shuffle And Moan", Peri gets a really bad cold that gives him zombie-like symptoms, so the inhabitants of "Keep Away Island" catapult him to the neighboring "Zombie Island" inhabited by literal zombies. However Peri ends up building a raft from the literal zombies who then return to Keep Away Island and infect the populace. Entree tries to fight off the zombies by using the sick Peri as a blaster and firing his snot at the zombies, but he runs out of ammo. Peri then discovers it was AllJustADream, only to wake up to find out how friends really are zombies, before the episode ends.

** In "Don't Have a Cow Humanity", which is a parody of ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'', Springfield succumbs to another zombie apocalypse due to a brand of tainted Krusty Burgers that infected people and causes them to turn cannibalistic, whereby they are dubbed Munchers. Bart is revealed to be TheImmune and a genetic TheChosenOne that may be the only hope for humanity, so the Simpson family need to protect Bart and deliver him to the safe zone.

* ''Series/{{Community}}'': Despite being a reasonably grounded (if a bit absurdist) sitcom set on a community college campus, the second season HalloweenEpisode "[[Recap/CommunityS2E06Epidemiology Epidemiology]]" was a BizarroEpisode where tainted meat from a government project turns the Halloween party into a TechnicallyLivingZombie apocalypse (set to Music/{{ABBA}}, hilariously). [[spoiler:The protagonist manage to cure everyone right as they're being infected, with the side effect of everyone forgetting that it ever happened.]]

** "From Bad to Worse" sees the zombie apocalypse happen on a ''much'' larger scale; the zombification spreads across the Candy Kingdom and Princess Bubblegum is unable to synthesize the antidote and is zombified herself. [[spoiler:It gets better.]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': The [[Creator/PeterCapaldi Twelfth Doctor]] episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E5Oxygen Oxygen]]" is an episode with zombies [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]] Well, technically AI-controlled spacesuits with dead corpses inside, but still count as zombies.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' has an episode where several of the Loud siblings get sick with the flu. It leaves them with pale skin, dark circles under their eyes, poor posture, and the inability to do anything but wander around and moan. Meanwhile, the entire episode centers around the healthy siblings as they build barricades, defend themselves with squirt guns, and try to escape the house without getting sick themselves.

* In ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "28 Pranks Later", Rainbow Dash takes pranking too far when she swaps the scout cookies being sold with joke cookies that stained people's mouths with rainbow colors. But for some reason anyone who ate them became sick and developed a zombie-like demeanor and an addiction to the cookies. Rainbow Dash panics and tries to keep the remaining cookies away from the 'zombie' ponies until the effects wear off. Eventually she's cornered in a barn surrounded by all the ponies and states she's sorry for ever pranking everyone, only for the 'zombies' to reveal they were all pretending and pranking Rainbow Dash back.
* In ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'', "Night of the Living Pharmacists" has everyone in Danville becoming infected with an electrical virus that makes them look exactly like Dr. Doofenshmirtz (somehow managing to change clothing) that act like zombies and lose intelligence outside of infecting other people. The plot revolves around the main cast hiding from the zombies and searching for a cure, all while slowly getting picked off and turned into zombies one by one. Interestingly, Stacy [[SleptThroughTheApocalypse doesn't even]] ''notice'' the apocalypse the whole time, as she is watching a horror film. It comes to the point where she accidentally punches one but still doesn't even notice.

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': The anime's second OVA, "[[Recap/MyHeroAcademiaTrainingOfTheDead Training of the Dead]]", features Class 1-A having a joint training session with Romero Fujimi[[note]]named for zombie maestro Creator/GeorgeARomero[[/note]], who has a Quirk that can temporarily turn people into zombies.

The ZombieApocalypse is a scenario no one wants to be in. ZombieStories are an entire genre completely dedicated to such an event. But in some works, zombies are focused on for a brief period -- a special episode, chapter, stage or level (depending on the media). It may be named TitleOfTheDead or other similar titles that evoke zombies.

A sub-trope of TropesOfTheLivingDead, EverythingsDeaderWithZombies and {{Episodes}}. May overlap with a HalloweenEpisode and/or BizarroEpisode. JustForFun/NotToBeConfusedWith ZombieStories, stories [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin entirely about zombies]] -- this trope is about zombies '''temporarily''' being the focus of a work.

!!Examples

* ''Anime/SpaceDandy'' has an episode in the first season about Dandy and his crew trapped a rare alien, who's a ZombieInfectee, first biting and infecting Meow and later the whole hospital where Dandy and QT left him thinking he was just "sick". The first half ends with the entire cast turned into zombies. The second half reveals [[RevenantZombie turning zombie hasn't affected their minds much]], and [[CursedWithAwesome they've also]] [[TheAgeless stopped aging]] or [[TheNeedless needing food]]. Thus when the rest of the universe were converted into zombies, it becomes a utopia.
* ''Anime/PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt'': The episode "[[TitleOfTheDead ... of the Dead]]" is about Panty and Stocking as {{Fair Cop}}s going for a new MonsterOfTheWeek, which in this case converts all the population of Daten City into zombies, and with the only weapons they can find are... [[ImprovisedWeapon sex toys]].
* The "Justice" arc in ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders]]'' has the Crusaders exploring a town overrun by living corpses being controlled by Enya the Hag's Stand, Justice. [[spoiler: When Justice is defeated, the town is revealed to be a graveyard cloaked within an illusion created by the Stand's power.]]
* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': The anime's second OVA, "[[Recap/MyHeroAcademiaTrainingOfTheDead Training of the Dead]]", features Class 1-A having a joint training session with Romero Fujimi[[note]]named for zombie maestro Creator/GeorgeARomero[[/note]], who has a Quirk that can temporarily turn people into zombies.

* A few chapters of ''Manga/BungoStrayDogs'' have the villain inflict a "curse" on the citizens of Yokohama. Since the curse causes everyone to [[BrainwashedAndCrazy mindlessly attack anyone they see]], the city quickly degenerates into chaos. The main characters are left having to defend themselves and the few civilians who were unaffected, while the protagonist rushes to get the cure to the only character capable of breaking the curse.

* The first arc of the Rebirth relaunch of ''ComicBook/HarleyQuinn'' features Coney Island citizens turned into {{Technically Living Zombie}}s after accidentally eating alien meat.
* ''ComicBook/TheMask'' has ''Night of the Return of the Living Ipkiss...Kinda'', a mini chapter in which [[spoiler:the mask buried in Stanley Ipkiss' graveyard takes his corpse to come BackFromTheDead as [[CameBackWrong Zombie!Big Head]].]]

* ''Series/{{Community}}'': Despite being a reasonably grounded (if a bit absurdist) sitcom set on a community college campus, the second season HalloweenEpisode "[[Recap/CommunityS2E06Epidemiology Epidemiology]]" was a BizarroEpisode where tainted meat from a government project turns the Halloween party into a TechnicallyLivingZombie apocalypse (set to Music/{{ABBA}}, hilariously). [[spoiler:The protagonist manage to cure everyone right as they're being infected, with the a side effect of everyone forgetting that it ever happened.]]

* In ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'' episode "Abomination", a Time Pirate who had been carrying a strain of virus crash lands during the American Civil War and infects the confederates with it which turns them into zombies. The Legends detect the aberration and arrive to investigate, ending up encountering and fighting off several confederate zombies. However history is at stake when Henry Scott, a black man and spy for the Union Army, is killed by a zombie. On another note, zombie confederates are about to swarm the Union Army camp, while Mick Rory gets bitten. So the Legends are split into three teams: helping to complete Henry Scott's mission to steal confederate plans, aiding General Ulysses S. Grant with fighting off mobs of confederate zombies, and trying to devise a cure for the zombie Mick Rory before administering it to him.

* The ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' episode "[[Recap/FarscapeS03E06EatMe Eat Me]]" is an OutOfGenreExperience into outright horror that has Crichton and friends trapped on a diseased, dying Leviathan full of cannibalistic zombie-like beings. It finally mutates into a SlasherMovie when the real villain behind the situation turns up.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': The [[Creator/PeterCapaldi Twelfth Doctor]] episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E5Oxygen Oxygen]]" is an episode with zombies [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]] Well, technically AI-controlled spacesuits with dead corpses inside, but still count as zombies.
* One episode of ''Series/{{Misfits}}'' has Seth empowering Curtis with a "resurrect dead" power so that Curtis can resurrect Seth's dead girlfriend. Unfortunately, it turns out to actually be a "raise infectious [[FleshEatingZombie Flesh-Eating Zombies]]" power, with catastrophic ZombieApocalypse results. Notable as rather than a throwaway, this is a major episode for Seth's character development and will also eventually, but indirectly lead to [[spoiler:Curtis's death in the following season]].

* Creator/{{Capcom}}
** Between their stages, ''VideoGame/CannonSpike'' has one in which characters have to fight zombified humans and dogs, as well giant mutated monsters. Being a MythologyPorn game, this stage is a clear ShoutOut to ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' series.
** ''VideoGame/MegaMan7'' has Shade Man's stage, which also doubles as HalloweenEpisode. Being in a base based on a cemetery, most of the {{Mooks}} Mega Man has to fight are robot zombies.
** In ''[[VideoGame/FinalFight Final Fight: Streetwise]]'', the GLOW drug makes people more violent and in high doses they can act like overpowered zombies. This doesn't affect the plot until the end [[spoiler:in which a ''Resident Evil''-like mutated monster and a [[FaceMonsterTurn zombified Cody Travers]] appear as part of the {{final boss}}es Kyle has to defeat.]]
* ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'': In the third game, the second level has you fight zombified people, and later, zombified soldiers of the Rebel Army. The reason for the zombie phenomenon is tied to the level's boss: an alien artifact (and the aliens that guard it) mutating civilians.
* The game ''VideoGame/YakuzaDeadSouls'', a.k.a. ''Ryu Ga Gotoku of the End'', is essentially the ZombieApocalypse installment of the ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'' series, pitting Kiryu Kazuma and company against a swarm of zombies and tasking them with finding and eliminating the source of the invasion.

* ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'' has a short story-arc where Creator/BurtReynolds recruits the Saints to deal with a localized zombie outbreak, which occurred when they shot down a STAG cargo plane carrying a classified chemical agent over a particular district of Newport.
* ''Videogame/AzureStrikerGunvolt'': The Stratacombs mission has reports of zombies and other strange phenomena occurring in a certain building. Our team, QUILL, has detected that the source of that phenomenon is several meters underground beneath said building, and Gunvolt enters it through the hole that his friend has made, and yes, the level is filled with zombie-like mooks. In the end, it's shown that the mission's boss, Elise, was responsible for the zombies - they used to be lab scientists and soldiers inside the underground facility where Elise was experimented upon; when she awakened her "Resurrection" powers, she flew into a rage and started a massacre, then used her powers to revive them as zombies.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'': In "Once Bitten", the residents of Bikini Bottom believes that Gary has "mad snail disease", which turns people into a zombie after being bitten. The town is sent into a state of chaos, with most residents being zombified, and the survivors hiding out in The Krusty Krab. In the end, however, a doctor explains to everyone that Gary's attitude is due to a splinter and that "mad snail disease" is just a myth, causing everyone to return to normal.
* ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': The episode "Zombizou" plays like a G-rated AffectionateParody of the ZombieApocalypse. The MonsterOfTheWeek puts characters into a lifeless zombie-like state that is transmittable through kissing[[note]]hence the name, a portmanteau of "zombie" and "bizou", French for "kiss"[[/note]]. Many tropes of the zombie genre are played lightheartedly as Ladybug works to stop the plague.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'': The episode "The Joy" is a homage to zombie horror. It is about the Joy Virus (a virus transmittable through hugs that turns the huggee into a deliriously happy zombie) infecting Gumball and Darwin. Towards the episode's latter half, it spreads to the entire school. Ms Simian finds out playing sad music cures it, but she fails to use this before getting infected herself. [[SnapBack Everyone is back to normal next episode anyway.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'', "Night of the Living Pharmacists" has everyone in Danville becoming infected with an electrical virus that makes them look exactly like Dr. Doofenshmirtz (somehow managing to change clothing) that act like zombies and lose intelligence outside of infecting other people. The plot revolves around the main cast hiding from the zombies and searching for a cure, all while slowly getting picked off and turned into zombies one by one. Interestingly, Stacy [[SleptThroughTheApocalypse doesn't even]] ''notice'' the apocalypse the whole time, as she is watching a horror film. It comes to the point where she accidentally punches one but still doesn't even notice.
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': "Pinkeye" sees Kenny become infected by a zombie virus and spreading this to the town.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' has had several of these in ''WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror'' specials:
** "Dial Z for Zombie" is the first ever zombie special, and possibly the first ever portrayal of zombies for a kids show making it one of the {{Trope Codifier}}s. Bart stumbles across a SpellBook in the library, and upon seeing Lisa mourning her late cat Snowball I, he offers to bring her back to life. However the spell GoesHorriblyWrong and instead of resurrecting the cat, corpses all over the world burst out of the ground as zombies hungering for brains. Eventually the world gets overrun with a full blown ZombieApocalypse and the Simpson family are some of the few survivors left. Running out of options they reason the only way to fix this was to reach the library and find a spell to reverse the effects of the zombie one. Driving through town, Homer guns down many zombies including those of historical figures, before Bart manages to reverse the spell to send the zombies back into their graves.
** In "The Homega Man", Homer is out buying a bombshell, during which Springfield gets nuked by an atomic bomb. He walks out and finds all of the people of Springfield has been skeletonized, but he's too dumb to realize they are dead until reading of the nuke on a newspaper. While he's devastated at first, Homer realizes as the only survivor he was free to do whatever he felt like and no one to stop him, but he soon realizes he's not the only one around. Not every person was killed, with the rest having been mutated into a zombie-like state and now want to eat Homer. They give chase to the Simpson house where Homer is overjoyed to discover his family had survived due to the lead paint coating their house. Just when the mutants look as though they wish to make peace after seeing this act of love, the rest of the Simpsons family pull out shotguns and blast the mutants dead.
** In "Don't Have a Cow Humanity", which is a parody of ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'', Springfield succumbs to another zombie apocalypse due to a brand of tainted Krusty Burgers that infected people and causes them to turn cannibalistic, whereby they are dubbed Munchers. Bart is revealed to be TheImmune and a genetic TheChosenOne that may be the only hope for humanity, so the Simpson family need to protect Bart and deliver him to the safe zone.
** In "The Fright to Creep and Scare Harms", Lisa sees the gravestone of UsefulNotes/BillyTheKid who "dreams of a world without guns" and manages to petition Springfield to outlaw all guns. But then Billy the Kid and his crew rise from the dead after hearing what she's achieved. Unlike most examples, these zombies are intelligent and take over Springfield with their guns rather than devouring flesh. To resolve this problem, Homer gets given a time machine by Professor Frink, and manages to warn past Springfield not to give up their guns and to instead shoot the graves of the undead cowboys which rekills the zombies.

* In ''WesternAnimation/SixTeen'' episode "Dude of the Living Dead", the gang discover that the mall has been overrun with zombies. The gang first tries to rescue all members of their group, pick up as many survivors as they can, before coming up with a plan to escape. One by one their allies fall to the zombies, some of them going out in a badass HeroicSacrifice like Ron and Darth Mall, while others are just TooDumbToLive like the Clones. The gang discover that Jude's hot sauce serves as zombie kryptonite and decide to form a LastStand where they load water guns with the sauce and blast as many zombies as they can. However the gang falls one by one until it's just Jude and Starr, who decide to share one last kiss before its all over. Then, Jude awakens and discovers it was AllJustADream.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' has an episode where several of the Loud siblings get sickwith the flu. It leaves them with pale skin, dark circles under their eyes, poor posture, and the inability to do anything but wander around and moan. Meanwhile, the entire episode centers around the healthy siblings as they build barricades, defend themselves with squirt guns, and try to escape the house without getting sick themselves.
* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': In the premiere of the second season, "Scary-Oke", Dipper ends summoning a horde of zombies thanks to a spell in [[TomeOfEldritchLore Journal 3]], essentially creating a mini-ZombieApocalypse in the Mystery Shack. And it turns out their weakness [[WeaksauceWeakness is a three-part musical harmony]].

* ''Anime/PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt'': The episode "[[TitleOfTheDead ... of the Dead]]" is about Panty and Stocking as {{Fair Cop}}s going for a new MonsterOfTheWeek, which in this case converts all the population of Daten City into zombies, and with the only weapons they can find are... [[DoubleEntendre adult toys]].

* One episode of ''Series/{{Misfits}}'' has Seth empowering Curtis with a "resurrect dead" power so that Curtis can resurrect Seth's dead girlfriend. Unfortunately, it turns out to actually be a "raise infectious {{Flesh-Eating Zombie}}s" power, with catastrophic ZombieApocalypse results. Notable as rather than a throwaway, this is a major episode for Seth's character development and will also eventually, but indirectly lead to [[spoiler:Curtis's death in the following season]].

* One episode of ''Series/{{Misfits}}'' has Seth empowering Curtis with a "resurrect dead" power so that Curtis can resurrect Seth's dead girlfriend. Unfortunately, it turns out to actually be a "raise FleshEatingZombies" power, with catastrophic ZombieApocalypse results. Notable as rather than a throwaway, this is a major episode for Seth's character development and will also eventually, but indirectly lead to [[spoiler:Curtis's death in the following season]].

* ''Anime/DragonBallZ: Anime/FusionReborn'' features the denizens of hell escaping into the world of the living, with many of them with the appearance of zombies and skeletons, including a zombie Hitler and his undead army.

* ''Series/{{Community}}'': Despite being a reasonably grounded (if a bit absurdist) sitcom set on a community college campus, the second season HalloweenEpisode was a BizarroEpisode where tainted meat from a government project turns the Halloween party into a TechnicallyLivingZombie apocalypse (set to Music/{{ABBA}}, hilariously). [[spoiler:The protagonist manage to cure everyone right as they're being infected, with the a side effect of everyone forgetting that it ever happened.]]

* The ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' episode "Eat Me" is an OutOfGenreExperience into outright horror that has Crichton and friends trapped on a diseased, dying Leviathan full of cannibalistic zombie-like beings. It finally mutates into a SlasherMovie when the real villain behind the situation turns up.

* ''VideoGame/DragonFable'' has featured two ZombieApocalypse Halloween events.
** The first one titled "Resident Sneevil" parodies ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' where an infectious mutant virus strain known as the Zardbie Virus breaks out of a secret laboratory. Though the Player and other heroes manage to contain this one by killing or curing the infected.
** The second event titled "28 Weeks Later" parodying ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'' deals with the full-out of the first epidemic. The player gets to first play as a SoleSurvivor in one town that got overtaken by zardbies and must flee after their safehouse is compromised. After a TimeSkip the regular Player discovers one boy still carrying the zardbie virus but is [[TheImmune immune]] to its effects. Though as a carrier he accidentally infects several humans and monsters, so the Player must sneak him out of the camp and through the forest while fighting off this second zardbie epidemic.
* In ''VideoGame/AdventureQuestWorlds'', the "AQW Zombies" Saga explores a what-if AlternateTimeline where Drakath didn't interfere in the ColdOpen fight between Alteon and Sepulchure. The result is Sepulchure kills Alteon, followed by the Grim Reaper himself when he comes to escort Alteon's soul to the afterlife. With Death gone, the souls have nowhere to go and the dead all rise as zombies. This was Sepulchure's plan all along, to zombify the Earth and weed out TheChampion of Light who would be immune. The player tries to fight against the ZombieApocalypse only to find all of their allies getting zombified one-by-one. Eventually the player, Artix, and Gravelyn (Sepulchure's daughter and the Champion of Light) end up in a LastStand defending the last survivor stronghold against the entire world's zombie population. The ZombieApocalypse gets resolved with the revelation that it was Drakath who created the AlternateTimeline for his own amusement. However Drakath [[NiceJobFixingItVillain ends up awakening Gravelyn's Champion of Light powers]] when he kills her father Sepulchure and in this new form she manages to hurt him. Drakath flees by giving her the SadisticChoice of killing him and letting her friends die or saving her friends and letting him escape, and once he leaves the timeline gets restored to the proper events and the ZombieApocalypse undone.

* The "Justice" arc in ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders'' has the Crusaders exploring a town overrun by living corpses being controlled by Enya the Hag's Stand, Justice. [[spoiler: When Justice is defeated, the town is revealed to be a graveyard cloaked within an illusion created by the Stand's power.]]

* ''Series/{{Community}}'': Despite being a reasonably grounded (if a bit absurdist) sitcom set on a community college campus, the second season HalloweenEpisode was a BizarroEpisode where due to tainted meat from a government project, the Halloween party turns into a TechnicallyLivingZombie apocalypse (set to Music/{{ABBA}}, hilariously). [[spoiler: Everything is covered by MenInBlack in the end who wipe everyone's memory]].

* ''Anime/SpaceDandy'' has an episode in the first season about Dandy and his crew trapped a rare alien, who's a ZombieInfectee, first biting and infecting Meow and later the whole hospital where Dandy and QT left him thinking he was just "sick". Not much time later, Dandy and QT, as well the rest of the universe were converted into zombies, creating an utopia.

* The "Justice" arc in ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' has the Crusaders exploring a town overrun by living corpses being controlled by Enya the Hag's Stand, Justice. [[spoiler: When Justice is defeated, the town is revealed to be a graveyard cloaked within an illusion created by the Stand's power.]]

In more comedic works, the zombies can be played more lightheartedly and there will more likely than not be a ResetButtonEnding for the next episode, or else the episode is non-canonical. In more serious works, the protagonists will finally find a cure for TheVirus and all returns to normal at the end of the episode... or they just left the haunted/infected place without coming back.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'': The episode "The Joy" is a homage to zombie horror. It is about the Joy Virus (a virus transmittable through hugs that turns the huggee into a deliriously happy zombie) infecting the characters until it's cured.

In more comedic works, the zombies can be played more lightheartedly and there will more likely than not be a ResetButtonEnding for the next episode. In more serious works, the protagonists will finally find a cure for TheVirus and all returns to normal at the end of the episode... or they just left the haunted/infected place without coming back.