History Main / EpisodeOfTheDead

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': In "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.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': In "One Flu Over the Loud House", 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/GrojBand'' episode "Dance of the Dead", Corey acquires a cursed magic amp. When Grojband rehearses with it in a graveyard, the bad music ends up awakening the dead. The gang get chased by zombies for the majority of the episode with some of their friends getting zombified along the way. The zombies all get attracted to the Halloween party at the school. To resolve this mess, Corey uses his typical InsaneTrollLogic and reasons that if the cursed amp and bad music brought the zombies to life, then the amp playing good music with lyrics would send them back to their eternal slumber. He's right of course and Grojband play their new song which is a parody of "Thriller" and gets the job done.

* 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.

** "Krabby Patty Creature Feature" is a better example. Mr. Krabs and Sandy concoct a lab-made Krabby Patty to modify the menu. It's initially a hit, but it comes with a grievous side effect; turning whoever that eats it into a mindless Krabby Patty like monster who can turn others via force feeding. From there, Bikini Bottom becomes overrun by Krabby Patty zombies, leaving it up to [=Spongebob=] to save the day.

* ''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]].]]

There are many ways this can come about. Perhaps the VillainOfTheWeek or the MonsterOfTheWeek have powers related to zombies. Maybe the protagonists or a OneShotCharacter accidentally release ThePlague or TheVirus. Or maybe they just stumble upon a post-zombie apocalypse location.

* ''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]].]]

** In Season 6, Atropos, one of the Fates and the BigBadEnsemble of the season, is a GodOfTheDead and boasts {{necromancer}} powers, which she uses to create zombies to attack the Legends. In “Zari, Not Zari” she murders the crew of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' that [[ShowWithinAShow exists as an in-universe show]] then revives them as zombies. She later does this on a larger scale in “I Am Legends” where she starts a ZombieApocalypse in London to take out the Legends, with the Legends having to fight through the zombie hordes to reach a safe house, with Sara Lance ending up pulling a HeroicSacrifice to hold the zombies off.

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.

* ''Series/{{Degrassi}}'' had the season 7 HalloweenSpecial "Degrassi of the Dead", in which Manny, Paige, Peter, Ashley, Jay, and Derek are besieged in a school surrounded by zombies created by genetically modified foods.

* Played with in Episodes 18 and 19 of ''LightNovel/FateZero'': Kiritsugu's backstory involves [[spoiler:his father's research inadvertently causing a ''vampire'' apocalypse on an island, and then losing his mentor to the same vampire creatures later.]] However, the situations play out very much like a zombie apocalypse, since the creatures act much more like mindless zombies,[[note]]the information on them technically being vampires is from other works in TheVerse[[/note]] and a few zombie tropes appear in both episodes, like ThePlague, ZombieInfectee, HeroicSacrifice, and TrappedWithMonsterPlot. These creatures only appear in those two episodes; the rest of the series is about the Holy Grail War. Unlike most examples, the zombification effects stick and the whole thing is PlayedForDrama, since such an event helped shape Kiritsugu into the battle-hardened magus he is in the present.

* Parodied in the ''Anime/SuperSonicoTheAnimation'' episode "[[TitleOfTheDead Cruise of the Dead]]". Sonico and her friends are invited to the launch party of a new skincare product, being held aboard a cruise ship, but disaster strikes when it turns out that using the product turns you into a shambling zombie. Unlike most examples, [[spoiler:the effects are only temporary, and by morning, the "zombies" are all back to normal.]]

[[folder:Light Novels]]

[[caption-width-right:350:They're not just robots. They're ''zombots''.]]

** In "The Unquiet 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.
** 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 version of ThePlague due to futuristic technology GoneHorriblyWrong, where medical 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 in an attempt 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.
** 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.

* In ''Series/{{The Flash|2014}}'':
** “The Runaway Dinosaur” had a Speed Force empowered lightning bolt resurrecting the corpse of Tony Woodward as a zombie.

* ''Anime/DragonBallZFusionReborn'' 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.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretShow'': "Zombie Attack" has [[BigBad Doctor Doctor]] unleashing a ZombieApocalypse upon the world. As a more G-rated version of this trope, the zombies are not the flesh eating variant, and merely transmit the infection via touch. In a more unorthodox means of spreading the infection, Doctor Doctor encoded two words, “yes” and “no”, that when spoken would turn a person into a zombie. Eventually the entire world ends up zombified with only Victor and Anita being the {{Sole Survivor}}s left to stop Doctor Doctor and save humanity, with Anita stealing Doctor Doctor's controller after both the MadDoctor and Victor get zombified, with Anita reseting the key words so that the zombie groan “uhh uhh” restores a zombie back to human.

* Creator/ArtixEntertainment
** ''VideoGame/DragonFable'' has featured two ZombieApocalypse Halloween events.

* ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'': In "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.

** 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 medical 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 in an attempt 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.