Night of the Living Mooks

The undead don't kill. They recruit.

"The undead require very little maintenance and rarely demand a salary or benefits. What they lack in speed and agility they more than make up for in persistence and can-do attitude. You won't hear any sass or whining from the undead! Since the victims themselves are transformed into walking undead, these henchmen are a smart investment that will grow your organization even when you are busy with other tasks."

— Neil Zawacki, "How to Be a Villain"

Undead mooks are the entire point of the Zombie Apocalypse. May be zombies, skeletons, or even mummies. An extreme form of Faceless Goons, in that while it's pretty hard to identify with someone with no face, it's basically impossible to sympathize with a corpse.^note Well, a mindless corpse at least. Free-willed undead, while they can be evil, can also be good, in which case they come off as mostly tragic, if a bit creepy.

May be spawned from Clown Car Graveyards, which act as Mook Makers. They may need to be killed in a certain way, or may even be completely unkillable, getting back up every time. If there's a Necromancer involved, defeating them may bring down this Keystone Army.

Sometimes the officer class will be made up of more strong-willed, sentient types of undead, such as vampires or wights. May be the official army of The Necrocracy.

If you really want to find these guys, look in the designated Big Boo's Haunt, or any other Unholy Ground. Animate Dead and Raising the Steaks might be ways to get troops for this. Compare/contrast Undead Laborers, who are used for constructive work rather than fighting, and Cavalry of the Dead, when the heroes' fallen allies rise to aid them as The Cavalry. Undead mooks are a staple of video games, Tabletop Games, and live-action alike. Being undead, the villain doesn't suffer Mook Depletion with these guys. Because they sometimes carry diseases that are fatal if left unchecked, they partially overlap with Instakill Mook. Compare Everything's Deader with Zombies.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Shikabane (or Corpses) of Corpse Princess.
• The revived dolls in Fullmetal Alchemist are a simple-minded variant of the homunculi meant to be used as soldiers. They deployed before finding any way to control them, and immediately attacked everyone indiscriminately.
• Hellsing:
  • The standard mooks in this series take this form. If a vampire sucks the blood of a virgin, they become another vampire; if they suck the blood of a non-virgin, they become a mindless ghoul who serves their creator. Though the Millennium vampires' bite create ghouls whether the victim was or not a virgin. It's implied that this is because the process that makes them undead isn't as good as the proper way.
  • When Alucard goes through his final release in the story, every soul that the powerful vampire has ever consumed over five hundred years (which numbers in the millions) is summoned forth as an army of familiars that overwhelms both Iscariot's crusaders and Millennium's Nazi vampires. As an added bonus, this final release reveals Alucard's true identity for all to see: Dracula.
• Shows up again and again in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Phantom Blood: Dio starts building one of these as a natural consequence of experimenting with his newfound vampire powers. Jonathan and the other Hamon users locate and destroy them all (almost) offscreen, once Dio is defeated.
  • Battle Tendency: Kars' army is ostensibly composed entirely of fully-fledged vampires, but without Dio's Vaporizing Freeze ability they're functionally identical to the previous installment's zombies.
  • Stardust Crusaders: Enya the Hag's Stand 'Justice' has the power to turn any injured human into People Puppets by boring foglike strings into their wounds. She can also use this ability on corpses. The area where she fights the heroes is later revealed to be a graveyard. You do the math.
  • Stone Ocean: Sports Maxx's stand Limp Bizkit is this too, albeit in a somewhat different way: when he activates it, any animal or human corpse (or piece of a corpse) manifests an 'invisible zombie' that has super-strength and is filled with homicidal rage at all times. The heroes initially think they've stopped Limp Bizkit in its tracks, until they realize that Sports Maxx himself has manifested an 'invisible zombie' that's escaped into the rest of the prison (taking Limp Bizkit's area of effect with him) while they were busy fighting his taxidermy collection and started killing inmates.
  • Steel Ball Run: It's debatable whether they qualify as 'undead', but the various forces produced by Axl RO's Stand Civil War are very like this in practice. Civil War's main ability, manifesting objects, people, or animals that its targets regret 'throwing away', can become this in theory, but where this trope really comes out is in Civil War's secondary ability, which brings Axl RO back to life whenever he's killed and transfers all of his guilt over to whoever killed him. Since Axl RO fell asleep while on lookout during the American Civil War (hence his Stand's name), letting the enemy forces invade and burn a town where his unit was stationed, he has a lot of guilt, and when all the people whose deaths he caused subsequently manifest against his target due to Civil War's primary effect... Did we mention that Axl has the ability to directly command any manifestations produced by Civil War?^note Except when Johnny tricks Axl into killing him right back, transferring the guilt back to Axl and making the manifestations attack him instead.
• One Piece: The Thriller Bark arc features the zombies created by Gecko Moria and his minions on the titular island-ship. Moria uses his Devil Fruit powers to steal the shadows of people who stumble across Thriller Bark, and then inserts them into bodies patched up by Dr. Hogback in order to reanimate them, giving them the skills and personality traits of the people that the shadows belong to. Most are just Mooks that can be easily overpowered by the Straw Hats, but then there's the General Zombies, who are significantly stronger fighters. All of them can be defeated by making them swallow salt, which purifies their bodies and forces the stolen shadows to return to their owners.
• The bulk of the Sorcerer Kingdom's army in Overlord (2012) is composed of the undead, created by the Sorcerer King himself, Ains Ooal Gown. It's noted when the Sorcerer Kingdom goes to war against Re-Estize that having to fight a literal army of the undead is incredibly demoralizing for the living, and even seasoned adventurers breaking guild tradition and fighting alongside standing militias are disturbed by the sheer number of them.
• An army of zombies had overrun a town in Princess Resurrection from a single zombie getting released and it turns out that the reason why Hiro is Hime's only blood warrior. A similar tactic was used against her in the past and it wiped out all of her vassals, including a group of her blood warriors. It takes a full-grown phoenix to put a stop to their rampage.
• Rebuild World: Cyberpunk example. Due to Powered Armor being able to be remotely controlled as People Puppets, the dead are sometimes moved in that fashion. In the first case, it's due to their suits being hacked and used for an ambush. In the second case, it's due to a MegaCorp having the company policy of its head servants having this control, ostensibly to get the wounded out of danger. In the latter case, the control of their armor is so complete, that severed limbs continue attacking as well, with their controller Pamela having the Power Born of Madness to control so many bodies simultaneously, as well as using it for some creepy Mummies at the Dinner Table activities.
• The Tao family in Shaman King has a small army of these, though they're referred to as Jiang-Shi.
• StrikerS Sound Stage X , which is set 3 years after Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, features the Mariages, mass-production humanoid weapons from Ancient Belka that are also known as Corpse Weapons, being artificial soldiers reanimated from corpses that continue to reproduce itself from the corpses in the area as an instant weapon.
• The "cultivated humans" used by early villain Suzaku against Yusuke and his friends in YuYu Hakusho. They groan, stumble, and don't ask questions about their motivation with the best of them.

Comic Books

• Turning characters who are dead (at the time anyway) into undead minions is an old comic book cliche, most recently seen in Blackest Night. Often leads to (at least some of) them being brought back to life fully. The Death Is Cheap issue is actually addressed in Blackest Night when Nekron is eventually able to add those who were resurrected to his army.
• Black Moon Chronicles: Haazheel Thorn raises a gigantic legion of undead, lead by mighty wyrm-riding undead lords... merely as a way to soften up the imperial armies before battle. He still loses said battle... which is what he wanted.
• Judge Dredd: During the Judgment Day arc, Sabbat the Necromancer unleashed a Zombie Apocalypse on the Earth specifically so he could harvest the corpses of the slain for his undead army for future galactic conquest.
• Transformers: You wouldn't think that this franchise would find ways to have zombies, but they have.
  • The most memorable case is the City of Fear incident, where a mixed team of Autobots and Decepticons were forced to work together to avoid being massacred by the zombified inhabitants of a long-destroyed city on Cybertron. Notably, it is a nominal Autobot responsible for the zombie horde!
  • In The Transformers: Regeneration One, Megatron raises and lobotomizes most of the Decepticons who had been destroyed by Starscream in the Underbase incident as his army, since he is sick to death of all the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder he had to put up with otherwise. Notably, while all the zombie Decepticons are recognizable, their personalities have been completely wiped and they are little more than shambling corpses with guns.
  • The end of the Titans Return arc features zombie city-bots being brought back to life to try and overrun the Autobots and Decepticons alike on Cybertron. Again, while they appear unique, none are provided with any personality other than 'undead transforming city.'
• Wonder Woman:
  • Volume 1: In the final arc the Amazon fight off and army of shades from Hades, with those Amazons who fall in the battle stumbling to their feet as zombies to attack their still living sisters.
  • Volume 3: Zeus raises the Gargareans, essentially an army of the zombified dead from the Heroic age of Greek Legend, to follow and aid him in subjugating humanity.

Fan Works

• In Child of the Storm, we have Ax-Crazy necromancer Gravemoss, who constantly makes use of various forms of undead as his minions. In the sequel, the Heirs of Kemmler (and Selene, and Voldemort) make extensive use of this, summoning up a variety of different forms of this.
• Code Prime: As per Transformers: Prime canon, Megatron can resurrect dead Cybertronians as Terrorcons with Dark Energon, and learns that he can do the same to Knightmare Frames as well. In the R2 chapter Spark of Darkness, he does this en mass by reviving every single machine that was struck down in Tokyo during the Black Rebellion.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: When Ami fights against a Incarnation of Extinction, a servant of Crowned Death, whose main attacking force is formed by Raising the Steaks with marine animals, but there are a few vampires and undead priests of Crowned Death as well.
• The Equestrian Wind Mage: When Ganondorf steals and scatters the Elements of Harmony, he heavily indulges in this trope in order to protect the Element of Honesty — in addition to using a Stallord as the main boss, he also raises an army of Stalfos and ReDeads, and enlists the aid of Grey Hoof and the Bone Fiends.
• Inner Demons: Necromancy is one of the new skills Twilight Sparkle picks up after her Face–Heel Turn, and she quickly puts it to use, creating an army of zombie pony warriors to serve her. Interestingly, these zombies have sentience and some degree of free will — they can talk, and at one point, two of them are seen arguing over the best way to carry out an order.
• As in canon, Jonathan Joestar, The First JoJo features Dio Brando and his undead army.
• On the Plains of Death in With Strings Attached, stepping on a certain part of the Plains (and triggered by an angry Jeft) causes endless ranks of skeletons, zombies, ghouls, and ghasts to rise up from the ground and attack. Oh, and the wraiths.

Film — Animated

• The Cauldron Born in The Black Cauldron are an army of unstoppable skeletal warriors, mindless automatons serving their summoner the Horned King, who wants to use them to conquer the world. They can expand their ranks by devouring living people whole, and can be stopped only by undoing the Cauldron's spell.

Films — Live-Action

• Absolutely Anything: Due to a poorly-worded wish, Neil briefly resurrects everybody who ever died, and they return as shambling corpses.
• Army of Darkness features, well, an army of these that Ash accidentally released unto the world when he takes the Necronomicon without doing the chant properly.
• In Dead Again in Tombstone, Col. Jackson Boomer and his gang of Confederate renegades are seeking the Horn of Lucifer in order to raise an undead Confederate army.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Played with, as the undead crew of the Black Pearl still possess the sentience and free will that they had in life. They just happen to turn into walking corpses in the moonlight and can't gain pleasure from the world; not only that but it's said that this is their true nature and not the opposite.
• Satan's Slave has corpses which were reanimated with Black Magic attacking the protagonist's family because they have turned away from religion.
  • The 2017 remake also features the Satanists reanimating long-dead people, as a homage to the original film.
  • In Satan's Slaves 2: Communion has the reanimated corpses wrapped in white funeral shroud (known in Indonesia as pocong). This is because they just recently died, and have yet to be buried before the Satanists brought them back.
• Sugar Hill (1974) has a rare heroic example. The protagonist, with the help of a local voodoo queen, summons Baron Samedi, who raises a bunch of zombies to help her get revenge on the men who murdered her husband.
• Thor: Ragnarok has the main villain Hela killing the entire current army of Asgard, then resurrecting the warriors whom she commanded in the past to replace them.

Literature

• Book of the Dead (2021): The Necromancer class is designed to be the support mage for an army of undead. The only ways to gain Necromancer experience and levels are to raise the dead and have them fight on the caster's behalf; Tyron can't level up by fighting in person, so he focuses largely on casting Status Buffs for his skeletons and area debuffs on the enemy. The individual undead mostly aren't very impressive, but they're hard to put down, and any fight he wins allows him to "recruit" from any (intact and compatible) bodies of his enemies.
• In The Black Cauldron, the cauldron of the title reanimates corpses, and the enemy is using it for an inexhaustible supply of soldiers.
• Chloe from Darkest Powers has the ability to create an army of the dead almost effortlessly, but since the process involves taking the spirits of people and shoving them back in their rotting corpses, she understandably tries to avoid summoning zombies as much as possible.
• Down Among the Dead Men a 1954 scifi short by William Tenn. Humanity is running out of resources and recruits for a Bug War that's been going for decades. Everything is recycled, including eventually people. The early models were only good as Undead Laborers for menial tasks and turned out to be very bad for morale. The new models are as smart as any human, and the production line has given them the faces of famous heroes of the war in the hope that they'll be better received.
• Discussed and defied in Dread Empire. Yo Hsi apparently toyed with creating an undead army at one point, but quickly realized that mindless undead fielded in sufficient numbers to be an effective military force would also be too unwieldy to be effectively controlled by a relatively small number of wizards and scrapped the idea. This is then brought up in one of the later novels when an actual undead army does invade, and people familiar with Yo Hsi's experiment conclude there must be something more than just an ambitious necromancer going on here for it to be possible. They're right.
• In The Dresden Files, Harry Dresden once had to deal with six necromancers coming to town at once. While only one (Grevane) made really copious use of zombies against Harry, since Dresdenverse zombies are more like Terminators than anything, they were more than sufficient. It turns out Harry really doesn't like people who use zombies, first because he considers it beyond the pale, and second because he doesn't really have a fall-back defensive ability when fighting them. For example, the defensive wards on his apartment will kill anyone that attempts to enter without fail. However, he did not anticipate a lot of people willing to sacrifice themselves to gain entry, or rather, someone controlling a lot of undead people that he was willing to sacrifice to breach the wards.
• In Empire of the Vampire, The Endless Legion is the Forever King's undead host, composed of a handful of ancien vampire commanders, or bloodlords, and tens of thousands of mindless, bestial ''wretched''. When let loose upon an area, the wretched act instictively, searching out any centres of population and slaughtering them wholesale, with little in the way of tactics or concern for their own survival. When commanded by a bloodlord, however, the lesser vampires turn from slavering corpses into dangerous, superhuman footsoldiers, easily capable of outmatching even the finest infantry The Empire can bring to bear. And, of course, those killed by the Legion rise to join its ranks.
• In The Final Reckoning by Robin Jarvis, Jupiter lures a group of rats to his lair, where he murders them all to create his own ghost army. They become ice spear-wielding, wailing spectres, driven by a lust to kill.
• Galaxy of Fear: City of the Dead features a mad scientist trying to create zombie soldiers. It goes right - not even horribly so, these zombies follow his orders, are not infectious, and are very strong, though how smart and dextrous they are depends on how long they were dead before he applied the serum. He also injects himself before someone can kill him, and comes back with his intellect and memories intact. However, an Undead Child he killed and quickly converted retains enough original personality to resist him.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince features a horde of voodoo zombies called Inferi, which the Big Bad assigned to guard one of his soul fragments.
  • It’s mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that Grindelwald wanted the resurrection stone because he wrongly believed it would raise an army to wage war on the Muggle world.
• For a sci-fi version, the Imperial Radch uses the lobotomized and computer-controlled bodies of political dissenters as "ancillaries", hence the titles of the individual books (Ancillary Justice etc.). Imperial warships keep warehouses of them, drawing them from suspended animation whenever needed. In slang, these are often referred to as "corpse soldiers".
• Towards the end of the novel The Keep, a nasty Humanoid Abomination who pretends to merely be a vampire uses the bodies of some German soldiers that it has killed to wipe out the rest of the German outpost.
• In The Laundry Files, zombies are more like low-class Eldritch Abominations that are summoned into deceased bodies. As such, they can be controlled—the more benign varieties, that is. Other types manifest as beings made of electric energy inhabiting stolen bodies, and skin is conductive. Special mention goes to the climax of The Fuller Memorandum, where Bob triggers one of these to seriously screw up a summoning ritual by cultists where he himself is to be the victim. The best moment goes to when he arranges for himself to be bound into his own body.
• Enoch O'Conner from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children has the ability to give life to both inanimate objects and deceased humans. He uses the latter of these abilities at one point to amass an army of corpses, which posses no free will, but instead are controlled by Enoch telepathically. He's also not the only character who can telepathically control an army.
• In the Old Kingdom series, the Abhorsens are constantly fighting undead Mooks, being essentially anti-Necromancers: putting down the walking dead rather than raising them.
• The Radiant Dawn features an undead army raised by a necromancer, complete with an officer class comprised of "cavaliers" — mounted undead that serve as conduits for Aaron's power, and "generals" — sentient liches that willingly chose to serve Aaron before their death.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Others have been amassing an army of wights over the course of years, possibly even centuries, and they attack the Night's Watch at the Fist of the First Men at the start of A Storm of Swords, and then destroy Hardhome in A Dance with Dragons.
• Played with in Warbreaker with the Hallendren rebels, whose vast army of Lifeless soldiers is one of the main reasons why the Kingdom of Idris fears and despises them. But as the story progresses, it soon becomes clear that the Hallendren are not the Big Bad of the book, and in fact much of the story is about the heroes trying to save them from the real Big Bad.
• The Ghost King in Transitions can resurrect hordes of undead from all over Faerun to make the lives of our heroes harder. And he does so gleefully!
• In Wind and Sparks by Alexey Pehov a necromancer spell can create a very localized version, when undead are fighting the living and the fresh corpses join the undead army. It's quite hard, few necromancers can control more than ten bodies at once, and even for the strongest the limit is around 30-40 bodies. But when a strong necromancer or Damned (one of Big Bads) dies, all his powers are converted to such spells and nearby dead start to rise spontaneously and attack every non-necromancer. As one character puts it: "They don't kill necromancers in Sdis. More trouble than it's worth." For Damned the affected area may span hundreds of leagues, approaching regional Zombie Apocalypse. And it isn't limited to just walking dead: a few of them may become "fishes" — undead covered with many small pieces of metal, who walk to groups of living and explode, killing them with shrapnel. This goes on until they run out of energy (weeks or more) or until a necromancer puts them to rest. Cutting heads off works too.
• The Zombie Survival Guide recounts several experiments by the Imperial Japanese, Russians and Chinese to try to train zombies to create their own undead army. They did not end well. AT ALL.

Live-Action TV

• Game of Thrones: The White Walkers are amassing a massive undead army beyond the wall. Season 2 ends as one of these begins, when they send one against the Fist of the First Men in "Valar Morghulis". Later, they send a much larger one against the wildlings in "Hardhome". Their ranks also includes undead giants, and after an ill-fated mission beyond the wall, a Dracolich. By the end of season 7, the entire army, at least 100,000 corpses strong, finally reaches the Wall and brings it down to invade the Seven Kingdoms.
• Season 3 final in Merlin: all soldiers are turned into something closer to zombie invasion than regular soldiers. Being killed only by Excalibur, they definitely count as undead.
• The Laws of Magic in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, like its parent show, normally make it impossible to bring back the dead, but in the finale Jafar is able to change the Laws of Magic and raises a graveyard full of dead Wonderland soldiers to stop Alice.
• Super Sentai and its adaptation Power Rangers have a few of these:
  • In the second episode of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger and its adaptation Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the Big Bad sends out a skeleton themed Monster of the Week, who uses a unique set of skeleton themed mooks. It is not known whether they are really undead or not, but they certainly fit the part of skeletal themed personality-less minions.
  • Since all the villains in Mahou Sentai Magiranger were based on famous Horror monsters, the mooks were the Zombie based Zobils, sometimes led by the stronger High Zobils. These also appeared in Power Rangers Mystic Force, were they are known as the Hidiacs and Styxoids.
  • In Juken Sentai Gekiranger the grunts are Rinshi, based on Chinese Vampires who were reanimated from the bodies of evil martial artists. When one is upgraded to Monster of the Week, it becomes a RinRinshi. Technically, the bad guys of that season are kung-fu zombie beast-men! Power Rangers Jungle Fury reuses the same concept down to the name of the grunts, with the only difference being that the upgraded form is called a Rinshi Beast, instead of a RinRinshi.
  • Power Rangers Ninja Storm: "Thunder Strangers" Part 3, has the Wind and Thunder Rangers fighting off a legion of zombie ninjas.
  • Taken literally in the Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger summer movie, where the rangers had to fight legions of undead spirits of mooks from previous Super Sentai series.

Pinball

• This is the main premise of The Pinball of the Dead.

Role-Playing Games

• In Dino Attack RPG, the whole purpose of the Skeleton Mummies is to zombify their victims and reanimate corpses as undead minions.

Tabletop Games

• Apocalypse has a level set in a graveyard (simply titled "Graveyard") where the undead will rise the moment the hero enters. The second-to-last stage, the White House, is also infested with zombies, but that's because the apocalypse is starting and the exit from hell starts from the Oval Office.
• The undead often show up in games built on the Dungeons & Dragons/d20 System rules, where they have a host of special rules.
  • They're immune to mind-affecting spells (preventing many of the better spells from working), immune to death magic, (preventing the best spells from working), immune to sneak attacks (making the Rogue more or less useless), and to top it off, skeletons resist piercing damage since there's nothing to pierce.
  • Zombies and skeletons are the undead mooks of most campaigns in which they appear. For all of their general undead immunities, both skeletons and "normal" zombies are usually very weak foes, and against a well-equipped party of adventurers are little more than cannon fodder. Most campaigns involving these two types of undead even blatantly use them as such.
  • 4th edition removes all of these restrictions. Undead now simply have resistance to one specific type of damage. Sneak attacks work just fine on them, and there's no longer any such thing as "mind-affecting spells", "death magic", or "piercing damage".
  • On the other hand, the two "holy" classes (Clerics and Paladins) can mow through them with ease - both get spells and abilities whose sole purpose is to kick undead hiney.
  • The Undead are immune to normal mind-control, but there is a Necromancy spell called "Control Undead". However, since it only works on the Undead few Wizards/Sorcerers bother to take it unless they know ahead of time that they will be encountering a lot of Undead. Same goes for the spell "Undeath to Death", which is the only way to bypass their immunity to Death magic.
  • Subverted by Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead, a Ravenloft supplement which helps Game Masters equip ordinary zombies, skeletons, and other corporeal undead with an un-Mookish diversity of powers.
  • Pathfinder, being based on D&D rules, keeps the undead's immunity to certain spells, but removes the immunity to sneak attacks from corporeal (solid) undead. Ghosts keep it by function of not having a working anatomy.
  • An interesting setting-specific case is Eberron's nation of Karrnath. After suffering enormous losses in the early years of the Last War, They started to resort to massive use of necromancy to bolster their armies' numbers without overstretching their resources; combined with the generalized low-level Lensman Arms Race that took place over the hundred years the war lasted, this means that not only do they have a large proportion of their troops being undead, they created some new, powerful types, and most of the rank-and-file are improved variants.
• Given the prevalence of Deathlords, the Abyssals, and shadowlands, zombies are common in Exalted. To aid matters, the Midnight Caste of the Abyssals have the ability to raise a corpse as a zombie with a touch, and there are several necromancy spells that raise anything dead as a zombie. To make matters stranger, the Guild trades for zombies, as they are easier to control then slave, and smarter then the dream eaten.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • The game has Drudge Skeletons and Scathe Zombies, just a few of many undead mook armies a Black using player can summon.
  • Then there's Army of the Damned, which creates its own mook army of 13 zombie tokens—then comes back to do so again, if you have enough mana.
  • War of the Spark sees Nicol Bolas invading Ravnica with an army of Eternals, elite metal-coated zombies made from the dead of Amonkhet that retain whatever skills and abilities they possessed in life. Their ranks include wizards and soldiers, as well as mummified animals and a few undead gods.
• MutantChronicles: The majority of the Dark Legion's footsoldiers are the largely mindless Undead Legionnaires and their more intelligent Necromutant officers.
• Warhammer's Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts are entire armies of these. The vampire counts raise zombies and skeletons as puppets, but the Tomb Kings' forces are driven by the spirits of the bones' original owners who are still loyal to their kings.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Necrons are Undead Robot Skeleton Mooks.
  • And then there's what happens if you make Nurgle angry...
• In Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, the Grand Alliance of Death has this as their schtick, seeing as their ruler is the god of Death and Undeath (and the biggest asshole in the mortal realms). The Nighthaunt are purely spectral undead, consisting of souls Nagash saw fit to punish for their crimes (ranging from Hunting the Most Dangerous Game to being a healer). The Legions of Nagash is your garden variety skeletons and Zombies, and the Ossiarch Bonereapers are essentially bone golems. The Flesheater Courts are technically alive, and thus avert this trope.

Theme Parks

• Imhotep has some of his own in Revenge of the Mummy, which he briefly uses to threaten the riders.

Video Games

• Banjo-Kazooie: The level Mad Monster Mansion has plenty of undead mooks: Limbo (skeletons that rebuild themselves after being crumbled to pieces by an attack from Banjo and Kazooie), Tee-Hee (green-colored ghosts based on Grublins that chase the characters relentlessly, and can only be defeated with a Golden Feather), and Portrait Chompa (skeletal versions of Grilla Chompa that come out of paintings to attack the duo). The game also has undead mummy enemies called Mum-Mums, but they appear elsewhere (in Gobi's Valley).
• The Battle Cats has an entire enemy type that has nothing but zombies.
• Bladed Fury begins with you fighting enemy mercenaries, which are all humans. But at the end of the first stage, you find a way into the underworld to investigate the truth behind your father's death, having you facing skeletons, ghosts, zombies, ghouls, demons, at which point the game starts sending undead-themed enemies exclusively. You stop seeing the undead later on when reaching the Imperial Court, but after defeating the Emperor you then went back to hell - cue more demons.
• Naturally, the Undead faction in Battle for Wesnoth is all about these, with even the two lone living unit lines (Dark Adept and Vampire Bat plus their respective higher-level forms) being appropriately flavored. While regular skeletons, ghouls, and ghosts round help round out the ranks, probably the most obviously 'mookish' type is the Walking Corpse — cheap, relatively fragile, melee-only, and only able to advance from level 0 to a level 1 Soulless, but hits reasonably hard even during the day and comes with the near-unique ability to turn living units it actually manages to land the killing blow on into more Walking Corpses (any other undead units still cost gold to recruit or maybe create, but these 'bonus recruits' are free).
• Borderlands has the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's got everything from regular zombies to midget zombies to giant lightning-throwing Frankenstein-esque zombies. For even more old-horror feeling, it's got Wereskags!
• At one point in Brave Fencer Musashi, the town is overrun each night with zombie/vampire hybrids until you figure out where they're coming from and how to stop them. The town even gets appropriately fiendish music until you do.
• Call of Duty: World at War features Zombie mode. You and some friends vs. hordes of zombie Nazis.
• Nearly every enemy in the Castlevania series is some variation of either this trope or The Legions of Hell. As such, the franchise has accumulated a massive variety of zombies, skeletons, ghosts and other walking dead over the course of its installments.
• There are two enemy factions in City of Heroes - the Vazhilok and the Banished Pantheon - that are almost entirely made up of undead mooks. And come Halloween, Holiday Mode ensures the city is overrun with zombies, ghosts, witches and werewolves...
• In City of Villains, a Mastermind player character with the Necromancy powerset gets their own set of undead mooks.
• In Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath, the Nod vanilla faction is given the support power, redemption. For a limited time, every militant squad (Basic Nod Mooks, weakest infantry in the game) killed in a certain area will be resurrected as a squad of Awakened (Zombie cyborgs). It's really more of a Useless Useful Spell, because militants are useless, and Awakened aren't all that much better.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: During the first part of the Spooky chapter, Conker reaches a graveyard where zombies unearth themselves from the underground to attack him. Fortunately, a supporting character (Gregg) gives him a shotgun so he can shoot at their heads to defeat them.
• The Hell chapters of The Darkness are filled with zombified souls of soldiers consumed by the titular quasi-demonic entity during World War I. Particularly horrible as the Brits cannot die no matter how badly their bodies are mutilated. Fortunately, the Narm of an arm-less, leg-less face-less moper in the village hospital cheers things up a bit. ...what?
• The underlings of a necromancer PC in Diablo, hey, the bad guys can't have all the fun!
• Donkey Kong:
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest has the Kackles and Kloaks. Kackles are skeletal Kremlings with pirate bandannas that hover to move around; they appear only in the level Haunted Hall. Meanwhile, Kloaks are spectra dressed with waistcoats that throw objects (or even enemies) at Diddy and Dixie.
  • Donkey Kong 64: In Creepy Castle and the nighttime version of Fungi Forest, an undead skeleton based on the Kremling (Bones) appears. These enemies can resist several attacks before being defeated, but they can be defeated easily by throwing an explosive orange at them or playing one of Candy's instruments.
• Doom has the player fighting marines who were killed by The Legions of Hell and now serve the demons. Their danger is not in their undead state, but rather, the firearms they carry and the hitscan bullets that they fire. The former human commando is especially fearsome.
• Dragon Age: Origins, with all the gorramed corpses you have to fight in Redcliffe. Undeath, in this setting, is usually reserved for spiritual manifestations (ghosts), not zombies. The Zombies in Redcliffe are corpses that have had demons implanted into them, making each type a slightly different fight.
• EarthBound (1994): Zombie Mooks are used by Master Belch to overrun the city of Threed. And they come in two flavors: Urban Zombies and Rural Zombies. Mother 3 has zombies in the early part of Chapter 2, too.
• The zombies in Eternal Darkness. Range from Mantorok zombies (who catch fire) to Xel'lotath zombies (who take "phantom limb" to whole-new levels) to Chattur'gha zombies (who regenerate) to Ulyaoth zombies (who explode).
• Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth: In the stratum Fetid Necropolis, there are numerous enemies and F.O.E. that are undead creatures by nature. Only to name a few, we have the Bone Archers (sentient skeletons that attack with arrows), Coffin Demons (corpse clusters that can inflict ailments onto the player's character party), Skeleswords (undead soldiers that attack with rapiers), Zombie Mutts (undead dogs), Roaming Wraiths (cloaked ghosts), and the bosses Luring Phantom, Undead King and Zombie Dragon.
• Although not technically undead, the radiation-seared Feral Ghouls in the Fallout series, who have lost their higher brain functions due to degeneration, look and behave like fast zombies and reside in dark underground areas. Dead Money's primary enemies are the gas-masked Ghost People, who, like Hollywood zombies, continually revive unless decapitated. Old World Blues has skeletons in Animated Armor, and Lobotomites, who are cyber-zombies that have had their brains replaced with Tesla coils.
• Guild Wars:
  • In the first game, the Necromancer class has the ability to raise and control a small undead army. The backstory reveals that the entire nation of Orr was destroyed in a magical Class 0 event. The bodies that weren't instantly incinerated have transformed into an undead army that plagues the swamps of nearby Kryta. They are ruled by a Lich who caused said catastrophe and who you were helping all along.
  • In Guild Wars 2, Orr will be raised from the ocean where it sunk after the catastrophe... by an evil dragon who turns all the corpses still there (plus the corpses of all sailors and pirates that happened to be around at the time) into undead Lovecraftian mooks. Orr just can't get a break, can it?
• In Hellgate: London, undead, and zombies in particular, are the weakest Mooks, but a zombie summoner could provide them in plenty. Some levels of the Necropolis can load one Necromancer every 5 feet, for a replenishing swarm that takes some work to wear down.
• Chapter 21 of Heroes of Mana has Roget and his friends being forced to fight his fiancée Elena who has two zombie Vuscavs under her control which she sends after them.
• Every Heroes of Might and Magic game since the second features an undead faction.
• House of the Dead. Guess what gets blasted into paste a million times over. The series' name should give you a hint.
• Jet Force Gemini: Many of the enemies Juno finds in planet Tawfret are Zombie Drones. They were originally standard Drones until King Jeff accidentally zombified the entire planet during an assault attack to rescue some Tribals. These zombies are difficult to defeat due to their endurance, so it's recommended to use either a fully charged shot from the Plasma Shotgun or an inherently powerful weapon (like a Tri-Rocket Launcher or a Grenade) to defeat them instantly.
• Every so often, Left 4 Dead will send a massive horde of zombies at you. Unfortunately, the timing and the location of the Mook Maker are more-or-less randomized, so one never knows precisely when a pack of them will come running around the corner.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The game marks the debut of Stalfos, which are skeletal soldiers that can be found in the dungeons. They're not too difficult to defeat, but it's important to land Link's attacks onto them accurately, as they tend to jump backwards to dodge them. In later games, they use a shield to deflect Link's sword slashes, requiring an opening (usually the moment when they prepare an attack) to hit them.
    • Gibdos are large mummies that roam erratically in the later dungeons of the game, and require several attacks with the sword to be defeated. In the 3D games, they can paralyze Link with their scream and grab him to drain his Life Meter, not unlike ReDeads.
    • Ghinis are cyclopean ghosts with large tongues that appear in the graveyards. They will increae in number if Link starts moving the tombstones. You have to defeat their leader so all of them disappear.
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: The Moas are flame-shaped spirits that roam in graveyards, as well as the entrance of certain palaces. The orange Moas merely move back and forth in the rooms where they appear, while the red and blue Moas move with more accuracy and attempt to hit Link (if they succeed, they'll not only deplete part of his Life Meter but also some of his experience points). The Blue Moas are also invisible, thus requiring the power of the Cross (an item found in the Three-Eye Rock Palace) to be seen.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: The Poe is a ghost enemy that roams the graveyard, much like the Ghini in the first Zelda game. They're enduring enemies, as Link has to hit them several times with the sword to defeat them. Their Dark World equivalents are the Hyus.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
    • Stalchildren are smaller versions of Stalfos that only take two sword hits to be defeated. They overrun Hyrule Field during night (only in the past era).
    • The ReDeads are zombies resembling naked humans that roam the underground areas of tombs as well as Big Boo's Haunt locations like Bottom of the Well, Shadow Temple and the future version of the Market. They can paralyze Link with their screams and grab him to absorb his life force until he dies (these abilities are shared with Gibdos). Link can paralyze them in turn by playing the Sun's Song so he can escape without having to fight them; however, in some areas he has to defeat them in order to unlock something.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: In addition to bringing back classic undead enemies like Poes (which are now part of a Collection Sidequest) and Stalfos, the game introduces Undead Rats in Arbiter's Grounds, which can only be seen when Link is using his honed senses in wolf form. When the rats start cornering his body (as well as Midna's, much to her disgust), he can perform a spin attack to dispatch them.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The Ancient Cistern houses Cursed Bokoblins; these Bokoblins cling to life solely through their hatred of the world (and, according to Fi, their attachment to their outlandish undergarments). They can be driven away slowly with the Sacred Shields, but the only way to kill them is by landing a Sword Plant onto them while they're knocked down.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Many Stal variants are featured in the game, such as those based on Moblins, Lizalfos and Bokoblins; they start appearing on many parts of Hyrule during night. There's even one based on the Hinox boss (Stalnox).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: In this game, Gibdos combine this trope with Big Creepy-Crawlies, as they inherit insectile traits that make them resemble mummified moths (some of them even have wings). During the questline to find the Lightning Temple, Link discovers that Gerudo Desert is being invaded by a Gibdo swarm which, combined with the unusually harsh climate caused by the Upheaval, has resulted in the population of Gerudo Town taking shelter in the underground part of the citadel. Shortly after Link teams up with Riju to find a solution to the problem, they're told that a swarm is aiming to take over Kara Kara Bazaar, leading to a Hold the Line mission where the incoming Gibdos must be driven away and the coccoons harvesting them destroyed. Then the Gibdos attempt to take over Gerudo Town itself, where Link has to help the Gerudo soldiers protect the entrances during the raid's prevention. Riju can help Link defeat the Gibdos with her Shock and Awe ability, but in return she has to be protected from the Gibdos.
• Madworld had a zombie stage. The zombies were your everyday Mooks, but out of ALL the ways you could kill them, giving them horizontal cuts kept them alive. Though, when grabbed by a zombie in the first arena, Death would come in and give you five seconds to escape the zombie's grip, less you get an automatic death.
• Marathon 2: Durandal was supposed to have an ancient S'pht bioweapon which turned Pfhor into Fungal Zombies, but it cut from the game because while it sounded really cool, a weapon that turns your enemies into uncontrollable zombies instead of simply killing them doesn't make much sense. The Game Mod Marathon Fell did have Pfhor who were zombified with a similar bio-weapon in its later levels.
• The Husks from the Mass Effect series are essentially cyber-zombies created by impaling people on spikes called Dragon's Teeth. The spikes inject them with nanites that convert parts of their tissue into inorganic matter. The Thorian Creepers from the first game look even more like traditional zombies, but they're some variety of grown, mutant clones that have never been real humans.
• Shade Man's level in Mega Man 7 likewise features undead robots.
• Metal Slug 3 has quite a bit of these: You have to deal with zombified civilians and soldiers in mission 3, and later on you fight off legions of zombified clones of your previous player character while trying to escape from an exploding spaceship. You can even become a zombie and vomit acidic blood that can take out damn near anything in one shot.
• Metroid sports a few undead.
  • Super Metroid: The first undead appear in the sunken ship area; the boss, Phantoon, is apparently a ghost, and spectral clumps of skulls fade in throughout the level.
  • Metroid Prime: Once you enter the Hall of the Elders, you'll encounter Chozo Ghosts. After defeating them here, they'll appear in many of the Chozo Ruins' large rooms (including their debut one), cutting the lights out and replacing the music with an encounter theme. You're only required to defeat them a few times, as the doors usually remain unlocked, allowing you to ignore them; in the Hall of the Elders to be able to use the statue, in the Life Grove for the X-Ray Visor, and in the Sunchamber for the Artifact of Wild.
  • Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: There are human corpses reanimated by the X and the Ing, respectively. They're slow, however, so it's not too difficult to dispatch them.
  • Metroid Dread has some reanimated Chozo corpses.
• Most of the armies of The Fallen Lords in Myth.
• In addition to occasional dungeons with undead, the Big Bad of Neverwinter Nights 2 uses verious types of undead from the Monster Manual (especially during Act 3), from zombies to vampire ancients. He also has a group of six of a Boss in Mook Clothing called Shadow Reavers, slain high-level mages revived with Shadow Weave magic, which are immortal until Ammon Jerro or Zhjaeve speak their true names.
• Nexus War: Liches in Nexus Clash are dedicated to raising a small undead army, and quite a few of them siege faction strongholds to keep "recruitment" numbers up. Anyone in the setting can raise zombies by pledging allegiance to the Nexal death deity Hashaa... though those zombies answer only to Hashaa and are more useful as a Spanner in the Works to be thrown into battles than a reliable standing army.
• Ninja: Shadow of Darkness: The second level is set in a Ghost City infested with undead, with skeletons rising out of crypts and zombies roaming the streets. Late in the level you can also fight ninja skeletons.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: We've got ghouls, ghosts, and more kinds of vampire than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and those corpses on the ground? They get up and attack you. But only sometimes.
• The zombies in Nox don't die unless you deliver the final blow with a fire-enchanted weapon or a fire spell and regenerate to full health otherwise.
• Overlord:
  • The first game features an area infested with zombies, as a mysterious and agonizing plague turns its victims into the living dead. In a twist keeping with its tone and sense of humor, it's caused by the proximity of a slutty, disease-ridden Succubus Queen; apparently, what's a harmless STD to a demoness is a virulent Zombie Apocalypse-inducing epidemic for humans.
  • In the sequel, people "infected" by magic are exiled to the Wastelands, an area devastated by a Class 0 magical detonation following the protagonist's disappearance in the first game. The exiles are transformed into mutated zombies by their close proximity to the overwhelming amounts of concentrated magic.
• In Plants vs. Zombies, your army of plants fight nothing but an army of zombies. Zombies that do pole vaulting, play football, ride dolphins, go bobsledding, and bungee jump amongst other things. Even the final boss is a zombie in a huge zombie robot. The only exception here is the Zomboni, which is actually a space ogre mistaken for a zombie in a Zamboni.
• The skeleton in level 3 of the original Prince of Persia is unkillable. The only way to get rid of it (and finish the level) is to keep pushing it back into a very deep pit. The skeletons in the sequel Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame are also unkillable, but after beating them they fall to the ground, then rise again shortly afterwards.
• Undead bunnies in the Meat Circus of Psychonauts.
• The zombies in Quake cannot be killed by conventional means, as they rise again after a few seconds. The only way to get rid of them permanently is to destroy their body completely using grenades or rockets (cue Ludicrous Gibs).
  "Thou canst not kill that which doth not live, but you can blow it into chunky kibbles" :)
• Alice has the ability to summon wave after wave of undead at you in the Raidou Kuzunoha games. "All of my friends are dead... so could you please... Die For Me?" And to make it worse, in the second game, the undead she summons are Made of Explodium.
• In Ratchet: Deadlocked the planet Catacrom IV actually features robot zombies. The Ghost Station features robot ghost zombies.
• Red Faction II's second act features "Processed" zombies, and one mission has you fight through a Clown Car Graveyard of them.
• Serious Sam:
  • The various beheaded units, including the iconic Kamikazes, are all slain Sirian soldiers raised with an LCU (Life-Control Unit) and given either piss weak pistols with infinite ammo, a chainsaw, or grenades. As is appropriate for a fragile zombie with no armor, they are extremely weak. There's also the kleer skeletons, magically resurrected skeletons of some weird race◊ that look like a combination of horses and humans, with horns on their heads and scythes for hands. They are some of the most common enemies ever.
  • Serious Sam 2 also has the flying kleers (which are flying kleer skeletons armed with Fireball launchers), and the zombie stockbrokers and zombie soldiers, which are more or less equal to human soldiers, and armed with shotguns and machine guns respectively. Their high damage hitscan weapons, decent health, and good accuracy make them quite frustrating in large numbers.
• The normal enemies in the Siren Games are all Undead Mooks called Shibito ("dead person" or "corpse"). They get more monstrous as time passes from their conversion... and simply can't be killed — they can be put out of action for a while, but the red water in their bodies will revive them. Generally, it's best to save resources and energy by sneaking past them instead of fighting them.
• Ghosts appear in several Sonic the Hedgehog games, first in Sandopolis Zone of Sonic and Knuckles, then the desert stages of Sonic Adventure 2, and finally some hooded pumpkin-head phantoms in Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog. They're usually an annoyance, not an actual enemy, but there was a memorable boss battle with the gigantic King Boom Boo in Adventure 2.
• In Soulcaster and Soulcaster II, zombies make up the bulk of the waves of enemies that attack you.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has former stalkers that have been made victims of rather unfortunate circumstances, from the Brain Scorcher, to Controllers, up to blowouts. These became a variation of a zombie in that they still have the brains to fire their weapons and even scavenge for loot, but they no longer became human due to their higher brain functions seared out by said circumstances. While they aren't that accurate in attacking and shamble about like sloths, they can still be dangerous to unsuspecting stalkers, especially in numbers. Otherwise, life proceeds on in the Zone, as it usually does.
• Inverted in Stubbs the Zombie, where the infected are instead a Redshirt Army.
• Whenever Neclord appears in a Suikoden game, expect these to appear.
• Rumors have that this trope was the cause of the disappearance of the Boatman, a train in Sunless Skies that was transporting the deceased to a suitable place. This is subverted: while the dead bodies DID come back to life and bound the train's crew because of a strange mixture of Negative Space Wedgie and Mental Time Travel, they did retain their memories, personalities and overall behaviour they had when they were alive. The only reason they attacked the crew is that the latter completely freaked out seeing the dead burst out of their coffins and tried to cremate them in the boilers, thinking this trope was into play.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Bros. 2: Phanto is a masked specter that is usually immobile and looks harmless, but is actually guarding a key. When a character grabs the key, Phanto reacts and starts chasing the character until they release the key. Chase will resume if the key is grabbed once again, but will stop appearing for good once the key is used to open a Locked Door. They also qualify as Invincible Minor Minions because, without an obscure glitch, it's impossible to kill them.
  • Super Mario Bros. 3: The game marks the debut of the Boos and the Dry Bones, both found in Fortresses.
    • Boos are round ghosts that chase Mario and Luigi when they're not looking at them, and bashfully stop moving while covering their faces when the brothers see them directly. They cannot be stomped, nor hit by fireballs, so the only thing that can defeat them is the Super Star. In some Fortresses, you'll also find Stretches, which are Boos attached to special white platforms, periodically creeping through them before hiding.
    • The Dry Bones are skeletal, undead Koopa Troopas that crumble into pieces when they're stomped, but rebuild themselves after a while.
  • Super Mario World:
    • In addition to bringing back Boos, the game introduces new variants of them: Boo Buddies are groups of Boos that circle around a central point, though there's always a gap in their formation. The Boo Buddy Snake is a row of Boos that bounce and rebound upon contact with ceilings, walls and floors. The Boo Blocks are Boos that turn into grey solid blocks whenever Mario or Luigi is looking at them, becoming safe platforms to stand on. Lastly, the Big Boo is an enlarged version of Boo that appears in some Ghost Houses, and one of them serves as a Mini-Boss whose defeat unlocks one of the entrances to the Star World.
    • The Fishing Boo is a ghostly Lakitu that uses a fishing rod to attack Mario and Luigi with a blue flame used as bait.
    • The Eerie is a ghostly dinosaur (specifically a ghostly Dino-Torch) that travels alongside a group of specimens of its likeness. They're traveling in a wave-like pattern, though not in the same wave phase.
    • The Fishbone is a skeletal version of Cheep Cheep that charges at Mario and Luigi upon sight, which will end up killing it upon crashing against a wall, floor or ceiling.
  • Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island: The Boo Guys are ghostly versions of Shy Guys that move back and forth, and are often found in Fortresses and Castles as well as dark caves. They can be eaten or stomped by Yoshi, however.
  • Super Mario 64: Boos are very frequent in the trope-naming level Big Boo's Haunt, and so are creepy eyes called Mr. I that always look at Mario (their King Mook is a larger-than-usual specimen known as Big Mr. I). Interestingly, though the game also introduces Snufits (ghostly versions of the Snifits from Super Mario Bros. 2), they don't appear here but in the next level (Hazy Maze Cave).
  • Super Mario Sunshine: Much of Sirena Beach revolves around Mario battling against ghostly enemies, which are attacking the local hotel and causing a huge inconvenience to the employees and the guests. The first opponent to appear is Phantamanta, a large ghostly manta ray that leaves a trace of electrified painting as it moves. After its defeat, the hotel is available for access, but the problems have only begun: Boos are invading the rooms and the attic during several episodes, a scheme planned by King Boo. A pink-colored type of Boo Block appears as well, which only turns into a solid block when Mario sprays water onto it.
  • Super Mario Galaxy: Bomb Boos are black, explosive Boos with long tongues. They overrun Ghostly Galaxy during the level's third episode, and Mario can use them to destroy obstacles. Their King Mook is Bouldergeist, which covers itself with a rocky body.
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2: Octoboos are ghostly versions of Octoombas that move in a circular pattern (similar to Boo Buddies). They cannot be defeated, as they merely turn invisible for a split second when they receive an attack (likely to evade it).
  • Super Mario 3D Land: The game marks the debut of Peepas, which are ghosts with comical faces that don't chase Mario or Luigi; instead, they move in a specific pattern.
  • Super Mario Odyssey: Chinchos are mummified, undead Tostarenans that overrun the Sand Kingdom during night, though they can be found in lesser quantities in other worlds. They chase Mario and can't be defeated with a cap throw, but they can be stomped easily to temporarily put them out of commission.
  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder: Found exclusively in the Fluff-Puff Peaks Palace, the Bone Run-Run Piranhas are skeletal variants of the Trottin' Piranha Plants. They're impervious to the Fireballs of the Fire Flower and the bubbles from the Bubble Flower, and their stems prolong during the effect of the Wonder Flower, making them more difficult to dodge.
• Total War:
  • Total War: Warhammer: The Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast and Tomb Kings armies consist for the most part of mobs of shambling zombies and formations of skeletons marching in mindless lockstep, which can often be spawned en masse on the battlefield through an assortment of Animate Dead spells. These are mostly meant to act as tarpits and cannon fodder, keeping enemy forces tied up while a core of valuable units does its work.
  • A Total War Saga: TROY: Cerberus can bring shades over from the Underworld to serve as laborers or to fight in battle alongside living troops, but requires equivalent amounts of living souls to be sent to the Underworld in their place. In game terms, spectral units become available based on how many enemies he kills
• Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism: In the fifth stage, the player is introduced to Orin's army of zombie fairies. Shooting them down will only result in them coming back to life and then trailing after you, spewing bullets in their wake. It's one of the many reasons why that stage isn't very liked.
• Wizardry: Various kinds of undead are a staple of the games, though they tend to only be common in certain areas.
• The Wolf and the Waves: The island you visit is swarming with the reanimated corpses of those who came before.
• Wolfenstein 3-D:
  • Return to Castle Wolfenstein has a whole set of missions pitting you against the undead soldiers of Heinrich I, and quite a few can be found in the last couple of levels as well.
  • Second Episode of the original Wolfenstein 3D combines this trope by the hands of an evil professor upgrading corpses into a virtual army of gun-toting zombies.
  • The Wolfenstein reboot has the Despoiled, dead Nazis brought back to life as superpowered zombie monsters by the Elite Guards' dark magic.
• Warcraft:
  • Warcraft: Orcs and Humans: The Scourge's method of converting the fallen become increasingly evident. An army of undead elves, the San'layn, was created from those Arthas killed at the end of Warcraft III's expansion. Oddly it's also become decreasingly effective, as much of Northrend is free of the Undead Scourge in part or in whole, and they seem to have lost that handy ability to raise significant numbers of the Dead, instead favoring the still-not-very-effective plague. The Lich King himself, and some of his more intelligent minions, do have this power, and are shown executing it in certain places throughout the expansion, but the fact that they don't is played up as Arthas' human side showing some restraint.
  • Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos:
    • The Scourge are a faction of undead ruled over by a group of elite Death Knights and Liches who serve the Lich King. Whatever their magical plague can't convert into an undead zombie, they kill and reanimate with necromancy.
    • In The Frozen Throne expansion, a faction of the Scourge splintered off. While they aren't above creating mindless minions to serve them, they generally don't go around converting everyone they kill. Then again, that changes in the Cataclysm expansion.
  • World of Warcraft: The Death Knight class can raise an army of ghouls to assist in combat.
• Yokai Hunter Shintaro have a level, Final Graveyard, infested with zombie mooks crawling out of the ground. In a game where nearly all your enemies are yokai, the zombies are among the very, very few non-yokai foes.

Visual Novels

• In Dies Irae, the powers of the Big Bad Reinhard revolves around his undead legion, a legion which number in the millions and all soldiers who died in the second world war. He is able to summon an endless number these soldiers to fight for him, and as long as he is alive, he can just resummon them when killed. And some individuals who are able to retain their sense of self within this army become one of his Einherjar, all powerful individuals who are further empowered by Reinhard. And then there is his golden castle of bone, Gladsheim, which is also part of his legion and can fight on its own if needed.

Web Comics

• The Character Blog of Girl Genius' Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer! includes an entry on his battle against a Spark named Huffnagle and how his second line of defense was a horde of undead stoats. Tedious, yet unnerving. It did not help that they sang.
• Played with in a story in The Gods of Arr-Kelaan where a god revives the dead as zombies in order to sell their services as hired labor.
• In Looking for Group, the undead sorcerer Richard mentions that he is the mayor of a little town on the coast. When he has to save his village from the legion and missionaries, it's eventually revealed that the entire town are undead as well; the villagers tear apart the legion fairly easily. They're actually fairly normal, except that the toddlers can tear out a man's heart barehanded.
• Undead mooks crop up a lot in the armies of Xykon in The Order of the Stick. In the early strips, he kills his own followers and raises them as zombies to stop them complaining; during the battle for Azure City, Redcloak orders the clerics to zombify the fallen rather than healing anyone (at least prior to his epiphany that Hobgoblins Are Goblins Too); and more recently they have Tsukiko the Mystic Theurge and her army of wights.
• K'Z'K's army of "Deadels" from Sluggy Freelance.
• Unsounded: In the past Cresce and Alderode used to fight using zombies in battle, before they made that a war crime in one of their few treaties. Cresce ends up allying with the Black Tongues and using a new variety of zombie soldier when Alderode attacks Grenzlan, reanimating the piles of dead Crescian civillians to attack and tear apart the Aldish soldiers, and reanimating the soldiers in turn to attack their former comrades.
• Played straight and subverted, in The Zombie Hunters. "Crawler" zombies are slow, shambling, and harmless unless you get within arm's reach. But they can attack in massed groups of several hundred, and their bulk provides an opportunity for more dangerous zombies to get close without being seen.

Web Original

• Jesus in Madness Combat is capable of reviving the dead as zombies to serve him.
• Eldritch in the old version of True Tail had an army of Skeletons with green mist.
• Phase got a faceful of this trope in the Whateley Universe in "Boston Brawl", when Team Kimba faced The Necromancer and Phase had to take down a couple hundred zombies. In a dark sewer.
• On the WitchCraft SMP, one of the starter abilities of Necromantic Witches is to summon up to 4 Zombie "minions" to aid them in battle, though they wither away eventually.

Western Animation

• Aladdin: The Series: Mozenrath uses creatures called "Mamluks" that fit all the requirements for being called a zombie other than eating brains.
• In the Superfriends, the Legion of Doom seeks out a witch who can summon an Eldritch Abomination that grants the Legion the ability to summon (seemingly) unstoppable zombies from the swamp around them under their control. They turn back the Super Friends easily. Then the Legion, predictably infused with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, greedily decides to capture and drain the entity. It does not go well and factors into one of their more humiliating defeats.
• Transformers: Prime:
  • Megatron's plan throughout the Five-Episode Pilot is to create an army of the undead using Dark Energon, which raises dead Cybertronians as mindless berserkers. Starscream and Knockout try experimenting with synthetic energon and dark energon in the third season in an attempt to make super-strong zombie mooks for Megatron, but it ends up backfiring spectacularly and they end up causing a Zombie Apocalypse on the Decepticon flagship instead.
  • In the Grand Finale movie, "Predacons Rising", Unicron takes it up another level: robot zombie dragons.

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