Basic Trope: Zombie animals.
- Straight: A Zombie Apocalypse occurs and causes dead animals to reanimate as zombies.
- Exaggerated:
- A more shambling version of Food Eats You.
- Even microbes and plants become zombies
- Downplayed: The dead animals are in a "sect" within a zombie army that is mostly made of human zombies.
- Justified: Animals often have abilities useful for spreading infection, such as small size, high speed or sharp senses. They are also not necessarily any more resistant to the virus/curse/nanobots puppeteering their body than humans.
- Inverted: As an attempt at countering a Zombie Apocalypse a druid creates a curse that transforms zombies into living animals appropriate for the biome.
- Subverted: Zombie hounds are encountered. The revelation is more horrific. They used to be people, before they wound up heavily warped.
- Double Subverted: However later actual dog zombies show up, with noticeably more accurate dog anatomy.
- Parodied:
- A necromancer ends up raising dead plants. Cue a supermarket where the fruits and vegetables hop out from the produce aisle... and only end up annoying the owner from the loss of goods and the workers from having to clean up the mess. At least, until the zombie plants learn to remain dormant until eaten . . .
- Alternatively, a necromancer technopath finds a way to raise dead robots. As a result, people are constantly harassed and attacked by zombie Roombas. Of course, they can't do much - at least, until the computers controlling the nuclear weapons are infected.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: No zombie animals are shown.
- Enforced: The budget is low, there are few extras available but they have a surplus of old animal animatronics, many rejected for turning out too creepy.
- Lampshaded: "Looks like these things don't only come in human."
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz reanimates various dead animals as zombies.
- Exploited: No-one expects to be infected from above by a zombie eagle.
- Defied: Animals are comprehensively slaughtered and either eaten or composted to prevent them from joining the ranks of the enemy.
- Discussed: 'Only humaaaaaaan zombieeeees. Nooooo animaaaaal zombieeeees! Animaaaaaals not cleveeeer like humaaaaaaan!' "But aren't zombies stupid too?" '...Yeeeeeeeees.'
- Conversed: 'Animal zombies? That's actually a really good way to mix it up a bit!'
- Deconstructed: The animal zombies only try to eat brains from their own species, staying away from people. They thus make a bad medium for contagion and are thus treated by the survivors as no less different from healthy wild animals.
- Reconstructed: However if there are enough animal zombies their bodily fluids can become a real hazard. Especially if they wind up contaminating water supplies.
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