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Headscratchers / Dead Rising

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As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.


  • When Isabela checks if Jessie is infected why didn’t she give us an update on that at ANYTIME throughout the game? Y’know....anytime before Jessie turns.
    • It's possible that Jessie showed no outward signs of infection, like a bite, zombies infect by transferring larvae in the saliva it's possible that instead of being bitten some of Barnaby's salivia dripped into her mouth when he was attacking her.
  • Ending A Just Bugs Me: How the Hell do you not Notice a Zombie in your Helicopter before you got on?. Its not like there were that many places for it to hide. Also, how the hell does a brain-dead Zombie lie low and prepare to ambush you in mid-flight anyway? This is just Diabolus ex Machina at its finest.
    • I assumed that it climbed in while he had his headset on, cycling up the rotors. The real question is how the helicopter pilot escaped from * three* military attack choppers who presumably had kill orders, and then made it back exactly 3 days later.
      • Those were just Blackhawks, not attack helicopters, and the didn't appear to have their miniguns. So presumably, the guy just got fined for his stunt, military didn't see Frank, and then by the time he came back the military was too pre-occupied to intercept him again.
      • As for the Zombie sneaking in while the pilot didn't notice, Ending C supports this - i.e., where the zombie sneaks up on him while he watches the roof for Frank, and eats him there.
  • Laser sword in the security office at the mall! I wish, it would make my job easier.
    • Just hit people with the benches, potted plants, sporting equipment, or whatever you can grab.
  • Bee stings=zombies. I just don't get it.
    • The bee's had a special hormone in them that that caused rapid cell development (for the process of growing cattle quickly). Apparently, in things that were dead, it caused zombification (and also apparently could be transferred through the bloodstream). It doesn't make a terrible amount of sense, but hey, its Capcom....
    • I interpreted it to mean that they injected the cows with something that would make them eat voraciously and grow faster. When wasps stung the cows and then humans - Zombies with insatiable hunger.
    • for that matter, how is the infection spread by bites if the victims are zombified by bug stings? The nature of the infection sounds almost like a weird form of blood cancer, but getting bitten by a leukemic isn't really the most fatal thing that can happen to a person. The wiki mentions a virus, but apparently the only purpose of said virus is to prevent the host's immune system from rejecting the parasites.
  • Otis. He can't keep his fingers off the phone, and if you hang up on him due to BEING EATEN ALIVE, you're automatically a rude snob who needs to learn some manner. (On the other hand:you DO get to smack him around a bit in infinite mode.)
  • Maybe I missed something, but what was in West's briefcase?
    • The one that fell out of the Helicopter? He never says, but we can assume at the very least that it had the spare batteries for his camera because he has to keep looting them from the mall stores. Other than that, your guess is as good as anyone's, though mine is that it's a video camera.
    • The rest of his photography equipment. Duh.
    • Guns, maybe? 'Cause he's covered wars, ya know.
      • Yeah, seeing as how the rest of the intro made it clear he was flying into a proverbial war zone, it probably was at least a pistol in self-defense.
    • The medication for his gimpy ankle.
      • YES. God, it all makes sense now...
      • His ankle was gimpy because he fell out of the helicopter. Note that he lost the briefcase before he fell.
    • My sandwich! Nooo...
  • The fact that two guys of the first group of survivors you meet can't overpower a single old lady when she wants to open the front door.
    • Parental animal love can cause strange things. That said, Lindsay was being fucking dumb then.
    • Truth in Television: It´s quite difficult to stop someone in a frenzy (you know, adrenaline rush and all), especially if you are taken by surprise. Even old people can give you a lot of trouble if you are not prepared and/or trained.
  • Exactly how does making cows voracious eaters help anyone? If anything, it'd make a food crisis worse through the sheer amount of resources they'd require.
    • I'm thinking they were trying to slow down the cow's metabolism so that they would get nice and fat instead of making them voracious.
    • It still wouldn't help. Cattle aren't exactly the most athletic creatures as is, slowing down their metabolism would have little impact. Even if it did magically make them fatter, they'd still require more resources just to reach that size.
      • Not so. The idea is to shorten turnover time. If it takes half as much time to make a cow 'harvesting grade' plump, you're spending fewer days cleaning, treating, sleeping, and caring for them. This cuts down on man hours per product moved, meaning you spend less resources on the people caring for the animals too. Overhead being cut down is paramount when you're spending tens of thousands of dollars a week.
  • After fighting Adam and turning off the roller coast to save Greg, why does Frank not turn it back on? Obviously it kept the Zombies away and it could have been a somewhat safe place for survivors to congregate (before another psycho showed up at least).
    • Umm... the roller coaster was still on. It's just that Adam wasn't around to use his chainsaws to keep the number of zombies down.
      • The thing is that the ride is "going crazy", as in non-stop. After the fight, it runs on momentary stops, giving anybody the opportunity to jump into a car before the ride starts again. As for why he didn't leave it on non-stop after getting the hostage Survivor out of it... Not sure myself.
  • Stumbling when you get hit. STUMBLING WHEN YOU GET HIT. This is what Japanese developers need to learn to stop doing. In GTA IV, when Niko gets shot, he twitches a little and the player maintains control. In Dead Rising, when Frank gets shot, he fucking stumbles backwards. Annoying when you're in a firefight, sure, but when you're trying to cross a fucking courtyard full of zombies being chase by convicts in a Jeep with a mounted machine gun? That was the exact moment I realized that the game was an absolute case of YMMV.
    • I read an article about game design (I think it was about WoW), that pointed out that the one thing which enraged players the most, across all game genres, was losing control of the character. Your guy runs out of bounds in Madden because of a canned animation, Frank stumbles when he gets hit, Your character gets stunned by the Sandman in Team Fortress 2, your sensitivity drops to near-nil when you get hit by a stun grenade in Modern Warfare 2, etc. It's all the same feeling and it's usually bad game design.
      • Admittedly, the stun grenade in Modern Warfare 2 is justified - that's the same effect it has on people in reality. Still quite annoying though.
    • Yeah, and why the zombies take health away anyway? I say Capcom should have programmed them to just stand there and be easily pushed aside so we can win without being bothered. In fact, forget pushing aside, just make Frank noclip through them, that'd save us even more time!
      • It's not about being smarmy or saving time, it's about game design itself. Staggering when you get hit is fine, annoying but fine, so long as you can't get hurt while caught in an animation like that. Getting hit, staggering, then getting shot again while staggered is a hot button for many gamers. Not having control of your character when you need to move carefully and rapidly is a huge issue in a game like this and its why you had mercy invincibility in the old days of gaming. That said DR1 was also a pretty early release on the 360, I'm more confused as to why this continued until DR2. Only OTR has managed to tone them down a bit.
  • The Hall Family. Although I do get satisfaction from killing them, it's probably because they bug me so much that I enjoy killing them. However, it does bug me that Thomas is reluctant to kill Frank so I killed the other two members first in hopes he'd pussy out, but he keeps firing. But then again, I just killed his family so...
  • Why do the zombies go berserk at night? Did they ever explain that? I don't think so. But, i haven't played in like a year, so i might be wrong...
    • Nope, you're right. Even in the sequel, it's not explained.
    • Well, the whole point of the science that caused this mess in the first place was voracious cows. I think this is that aspect showing itself in the human zombies, resulting in their berserk status. The real question is why it only happens at night, in an in-universe reasoning...
      • My personal theory is that it's less "Zombies are stronger at night" than "Zombies are weaker in the day". Something like solar radiation hampering the instincts of the Queens lodged in their rotted skulls or something. That said, since the first "night-time" cutscene shows the zombies howling at the moon, perhaps some strain of Lycanthropy is involved?
      • This is actually based on how bees work in real life. Bees lose their little bee minds when the sun goes down if they aren't in or around their hives. A lot of nocturnal predators for bees, and they want to be back where there is safety in numbers.
  • What was the point of Carlito's last resort? Not only did it make no sense but it wasn't neccessary. How exactly did Carlito expect tiny little larvae to survive an explosion that was supposed to destroy an entire mall let alone throw them into the atmosphere were by some miracle they wouldn't die and would spread all over the planet. Then in overtime mode we learn about his "little ticking timebombs" all over america meaning that spreading the larvae would have been pointless, or was it just a case of There Is No Kill Like Overkill?
    • Presumably, one of the modifications made to the Wasps was to give the larva a highly-durable dormant state, like fluke "cysts." As for the other part... the "timebombs" would infect parts of America eventually, assuming nothing went wrong. The explosion would infect the entire country right now.
  • Alright, so I'm escorting several survivors back to the safe room, including the Barricade pair and Leah. Now, as we all know, Aaron can't defend himself to save his life, and Leah sprained her ankle. Fine. But why on earth can't I saddle Leah with him, instead of piggybacking her while praying to god that the idiots I've handed Submachine guns shoot the zombies? If you've got a survivor who can only follow you, and one who can bearly walk, why can't you just sort of combine the two?
  • How exactly do you make zombie-creating wasps while trying to mass-produce cattle?
    • Science.
      • It was all an accident, presumably from a rare subversion of LEGO Genetics - they only knew that the wasp-stings turned cows into voracious plant-eaters, and trying to enhance this part accidentally made the wasp-stings turn people into voracious meat-eaters - not sure how this results in undeath afterwards, since the cows weren't turned into Zombie Cows, or otherwise they wouldn't have bothered with the project (wouldn't want spoiled meat, would we?)
      • The zombies aren't absorbing all of the nutrients, the parasites in their bodies are. As a result, the zombies' bodies are breaking down while the parasite feeds on them, leaving only the bare minimals, so to speak.
      • They were trying to refine the hormone the larvas generate that make the host gorge themselves with food despite hunger, to use on livestock to fatten them up. See Dr. Barnaby's research.
  • How do the zombies get into the warehouse elevator in DR1? Since when do they press buttons? And if they do, why wouldn't someone rig up a captcha, so to speak? Even a keypad with the combination scrawled on the wall next to it would work.
    • I always just assumed a zombie bumped into the button and some zombies stumbled into the elevator while the door is open.
      • It is possible. I've done it myself on accident and I'm not even a zombie.
    • A survivor was running from the zombies, he enters the elevator and tries to get inside where he figures he or she will be safe. Now, you know how slowly those damn doors close, so a group of zombies makes it inside too. Next thing you see, inside the elevator there are only the zombies who chased him... plus one.
  • I'm wondering why Capcom didn't just go the whole nine yards and make Otis turn to psychopathy on Overtime mode. In fact, I'm wondering why Infinity Mode doesn't have a story as well. It is deep enough to fit one anyway.
  • So did Otis escape with your survivors or not? I keep seeing different answers on different wikis, and I thought the note implied that he got away while the special forces were getting the survivors.
    • The note is there to tell you that yes, Otis escaped with as many survivors as he could escape with. Of course, without any real evidence, it's still unknown how many survivors Otis escaped....
      • A recent theory posted on the WMG Page says that even the survivors Otis didn't escape with are now safe and sound, thanks to Frank West exposing the outbreak, and thus forcing the Special Forces to release the survivors to save what little face they had left with the public. Just throwing that out there.
      • Otis is confirmed to have survived and escaped as on Dead Rising 3. It's a shame that you find his wake in a mortuary, though.
  • So Carlito wanted to take revenge on the nation for the Santa Cabeza incident... but of all the places he could have chosen to unleash the parasite on, why did he choose some middle-of-nowhere town like Willamette? Why not someplace like New York City or Los Angeles, where the outbreak would be far more damaging and nearly impossible to cover up?
    • Have you completed the full story plot? Carlito's plan was to do exactly that. He planted little ticking zombie timebomb orphans in families all over the country. His plan was to destroy Willamette, which was roughly the size of Santa Cabeza, and have Frank or whomever reporter showed up and tell the world what it was about. Then the real attack kicks off and destroys the US.
  • How does killing a Queen kill the zombies around her? Queens, as we are told, is just a term for the bugs. They are not hive queens like bees or ants or anything. So how does killing one kill all the larvas around her instantly, despite them being separate, distinct, organisms?
    • Maybe it releases some kind of phermone or something that would let other bees in on the fact that a Queen just died? Pure speculation, but it'd kind of make sense for them to get the message, and then proceed to get out of the way of whatever just killed the queen, possibly by eating their way out of the host (providing both nutrients and a quicker way out than, say, following the digestive tract or whatever). That'd leave them with a bunch of scattered, well-fed larvae that are away from whatever killed the Queen. Still has a few holes, but might be an explanation?
  • How come this huge shopping mall doesn't have a video game store? Or an arcade? Feels like a bit of a missed opportunity as not only would it have allowed Capcom to incorporate shout-outs to their games in a natural manner (and avert Bland-Name Product), but also work as another shout-out to Dawn of the Dead (1978), which prominently featured an arcade in one scene. Also, wouldn't it have been fun (and meta!) to bash zombie-faces in with Xbox 360-consoles or Street Fighter arcade cabinets?
    • Not every mall has an arcade in real life, this troper lives around several decently sized malls and at least two of them don't have arcades and the video game stores it has are very small. Also, the North Plaza was still undergoing construction so it's entirely possible it would've had a video game store and/or arcade, especially when you consider it's connected to Wonderland Plaza (the entertainment bit).
  • Concerning a certain revelation in Overtime Mode: if you play through the game without getting hit once by a zombie, how does Frank end up getting infected?
    • It's implied the zombie Isabella shot was more successful than it appeared, especially since Frank just curls over moments later. It cuts to Isabella's gun just as its inches from his neck after all.
  • How is this outbreak not national news already? The intro cutscene implies that the mother and daughter are fleeing from zombies, and as they're driving up it's clear the town is utterly overrun. Now I get that they had a black hawk already on the scene, so it's possible the government was already on the job. But if Carlos was affecting outlying communities as well, how was it no one had managed to get the word out?
    • Willamette is a small town in the middle of Colorado. It probably has local radio, newspaper and that's about it. Any national coverage would have to come out of town, by which point Special Forces/National Guard already had the area locked down. Communications out of the town had already been blocked which is why even Jessie - a DHS agent - can't get a line back to HQ. Frank was only there because Carlito tipped him off before the outbreak had even started and was smart enough to take a charted helicopter rather than go it on four wheels.
  • Carlito tipped off at least Frank that something big was happening in sleepy town Willamette. He also seems surprised that he didn't bring a crew with him. So then why then did he install a signal jammer if he ever intended the news to get out?
    • The 'news' was going to get out eventually when he blew up the mall, so his plan never really hinged on Frank getting his scoop but it would be a juicy bonus so he could explain the Santa Cabasa thing. It's possible he wanted to organise the media leaks himself, so he meets Frank on the helipad, let him (and whatever crew he brought) take a look at the situation in the Entrance Plaza, get some notes ready and then disable the jammer in time for them to broadcast. The zombies breaking into the mall threw that idea in the air, plus Frank started working with Brad, so he just went "screw it" and decided to go with the rest of his plan.
  • Why do none of the survivors ever question how they are all supposed to fit into the one helicopter Frank tells everyone that is coming? You can't squeeze fifty people into your average civilian helicopter, no matter how hard you try. There are even some instances where it would make sense for someone to bring this up in order to deliberately stir up unrest, such as when Kindell is trying to rouse people for his alternate escape strategy.
    • Perhaps Frank’s plan was to have Ed fly a number of people out and keep returning until everyone was escorted out of dodge? Maybe he could ask Ed to call for backup? Notably, in Ending B, Ed tells Frank that he’ll have to pay for the extra fuel.
  • Why are there trapdoors installed in a hardware store, of all places?
    • Maintenance access, it's probably got cables and piping in it, how a burly man can teleport is unknown.

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