Fan Works
Rick Stanton: Good thing the government has zombie apocalypse plans, you believe that? Better brush up on your brain-slurper lore, folks! Gotta shoot 'em in the head...
Jackson Barnes: Lot of good that did for Mauzer. Those freak shows don't play by our rules.
Jackson Barnes: Lot of good that did for Mauzer. Those freak shows don't play by our rules.
Zombies:
Unlike vampires, zombies (rotters, unconsecrated, revenants) are all alike, no matter which city you visit. They will come after you in smelly, shambling mobs, and you will need help from the locals to evade them. The most remarkable thing about them is that you are not allowed to call them zombies, or even mention the "Z" word.
If you are on a group Tour, one of your companions will probably be savaged by a zombie and then turn into one. However, this person will not be your best friend or the person you have a crush on, so there is no need to worry unduly.
Unlike vampires, zombies (rotters, unconsecrated, revenants) are all alike, no matter which city you visit. They will come after you in smelly, shambling mobs, and you will need help from the locals to evade them. The most remarkable thing about them is that you are not allowed to call them zombies, or even mention the "Z" word.
If you are on a group Tour, one of your companions will probably be savaged by a zombie and then turn into one. However, this person will not be your best friend or the person you have a crush on, so there is no need to worry unduly.
Film Live-Action
Wiry Girl: That's not fair! I had zombies too!
Sitterson: Yes, you had "Zombies", but this is "Zombie Redneck Torture Family". Entirely separate thing. It's like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal.
"I'm the watchman of the Buffalora Cemetery. I don't know how the epidemic started. All I know is that some people, on the seventh night after their death, come back to life. I call them Returners, but frankly I can't understand why they're so anxious to return. The only way to get rid of them once and for all is to split their heads open. A spade'll do it, but a dum-dum bullet is best. Is this the beginning of an invasion? Does it happen in all cemeteries? Or is Buffalora just an exception? Who knows? And in the end, who cares? I'm just doing my job."
—Francesco Dellamorte, Cemetery Man
"It would answer the riddle, wouldn't it? Remote-controlled creatures, their brains powered by atomic energy, roaming the streets, directed from a central point."
—Dr. Chet Walker, Creature with the Atom Brain
"She's not making sense! If they're moving, they've got brain function! If they've got brain function they're not dead yet!"
— The Last Days on Mars (2013).
"Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary glands of recent dead."
—The Ruler,Plan 9 from Outer Space
Iggy: Wait, wait! Is this a Romero zombie or one of the new virus zombies?
Alexandra: What the hell are you talking about?
Dana: Okay, okay, now the old zombies are like, stiff.
Iggy: They lumber.
Dana: Whatever!
Iggy: No, no, not whatever, they lumber, it's important. The new ones are, like, super-fit sport zombies. Old zombies, we can take this guy; new zombies... we may be fucked.
Alexandra: What the hell are you talking about?
Dana: Okay, okay, now the old zombies are like, stiff.
Iggy: They lumber.
Dana: Whatever!
Iggy: No, no, not whatever, they lumber, it's important. The new ones are, like, super-fit sport zombies. Old zombies, we can take this guy; new zombies... we may be fucked.
Dr. Bruner: Who are you? And what are they?
Legendre: For you, my friend, they are the angels of death.
Literature
Earl considered the facts. Restless corpses might rise from their graves for a variety of reasons. Perhaps an ancient Indian curse or bad voodoo in the soil or any number of causes. But zombies did not spontaneously sprout like weeds. You had to have a corpse before you could have a zombie. It was the rules. Unless someone was using black magic. Not just the everyday evil eye kind of black magic either — something far more sinister, far more powerful, and far more dangerous. This wasn't going to be as easy to fix as he had assumed.
The thought was sinking in with greater and greater certainty and considerably greater discomfort: I was dead. I was alive and dead at the same time. I was undead. My current biological status was aggravatingly inconsistent.
I had seen zombies before. There had been a necromancer's tower in the village near my family farm and you'd sometimes see an undead slave lurching through the marketplace. On shopping days, me and a few other kids used to flick bits of bread at them so that hungry seagulls would chase them around. And then later, at college, Mr Everwind was in the habit of raising undead teaching assistants, and a popular hazing ritual was to steal the Undead Command Stone from the staff room and use it to make them pole dance on the school flagpole. I remembered how amusing it had been at the time to watch them move around as if their joints were held together with elastic bands. Now I just wanted to know how they had made it look so easy.
I had seen zombies before. There had been a necromancer's tower in the village near my family farm and you'd sometimes see an undead slave lurching through the marketplace. On shopping days, me and a few other kids used to flick bits of bread at them so that hungry seagulls would chase them around. And then later, at college, Mr Everwind was in the habit of raising undead teaching assistants, and a popular hazing ritual was to steal the Undead Command Stone from the staff room and use it to make them pole dance on the school flagpole. I remembered how amusing it had been at the time to watch them move around as if their joints were held together with elastic bands. Now I just wanted to know how they had made it look so easy.
— Mogworld
ZOMBIES. These are just the UNDEAD, except nastier, more pitiable, and generally easier to kill. When you slash your SWORD across their stomachs — which you will inevitably do — they watch their impossibly decayed intestines pour out in a glob, and then look at you with an expression of ultimate pathos (OMT) before crumpling at the knees. Naturally they SMELL quite strongly.
Valkyrie: ...He says they ate someone.
Sanguine: They what?
Skulduggery: (Confused) Eating people is what zombies tend to do.
Sanguine: Not these guys.
Sanguine: They what?
Skulduggery: (Confused) Eating people is what zombies tend to do.
Sanguine: Not these guys.
— Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days
He comes from the grave, his body a home of worms and filth. No life in his eyes, no warmth of his skin, no beating of his breast. His soul as empty and dark as the night sky. He laughs at the blade, spits at the arrow, for they will not harm his flesh. For eternity, he will walk the earth, smelling the sweet blood of the living, feasting upon the bones of the damned. Beware, for he is the living dead.
— Obscure Hindu text circa 1000 BCE, The Zombie Survival Guide
Live-Action TV
Skinny Pete: Left 4 Dead, yo! The way them bitches get cranial when you cap 'em in the head is like... BOOYAH!
Badger: No, no, no, man, Resident Evil 4 by a long shot!
Skinny Pete: Aw, please, brother, you're fronting!
Badger: No, man, seriously! That chick, the one you gotta rescue? She's smokin', bro! And then you're, like, the last undead dude on earth, so how can you not be dipping into that?! Talk about inspiring a brother to kick some zombie ass!
Skinny Pete: They're trying to eat your brain, bro! Dude don't need no more motivation!
Badger: ...That's a fair point, I guess... Okay, okay, okay, Call of Duty: World at War, Zombie Mode! Now that's the bomb! Think on it, bro: they're not just zombies, they're Nazi Zombies!
Skinny Pete: [scoffs] Nazi zombies...
Badger: Yeah, man, SS Waffen troopers too, which are, like, the baddest-ass Nazis of the whole Nazi family!
Skinny Pete: Zombies are dead, man! What difference does it make what their job was when they were living?!
Badger: Dude, you are so historically retarded! Nazi zombies don't want to eat you just because they're craving the protein! They do it, 'cause... they do it 'cause they hate Americans, man! Talibans, they're the Talibans of the zombie world!
Skinny Pete: I played the game, they ain't exactly fleet of foot! I'm saying where's the challenge?! At least the zombies in Left 4 Dead clock a respectable forty, you gotta lead them and shit!
Badger: Dude, that's because they're not even zombies! They're just infected! They got like this rage virus, amps them up like they've been smoking the schwag! Apples and oranges, bro, totally unfair to compare the two.
Badger: No, no, no, man, Resident Evil 4 by a long shot!
Skinny Pete: Aw, please, brother, you're fronting!
Badger: No, man, seriously! That chick, the one you gotta rescue? She's smokin', bro! And then you're, like, the last undead dude on earth, so how can you not be dipping into that?! Talk about inspiring a brother to kick some zombie ass!
Skinny Pete: They're trying to eat your brain, bro! Dude don't need no more motivation!
Badger: ...That's a fair point, I guess... Okay, okay, okay, Call of Duty: World at War, Zombie Mode! Now that's the bomb! Think on it, bro: they're not just zombies, they're Nazi Zombies!
Skinny Pete: [scoffs] Nazi zombies...
Badger: Yeah, man, SS Waffen troopers too, which are, like, the baddest-ass Nazis of the whole Nazi family!
Skinny Pete: Zombies are dead, man! What difference does it make what their job was when they were living?!
Badger: Dude, you are so historically retarded! Nazi zombies don't want to eat you just because they're craving the protein! They do it, 'cause... they do it 'cause they hate Americans, man! Talibans, they're the Talibans of the zombie world!
Skinny Pete: I played the game, they ain't exactly fleet of foot! I'm saying where's the challenge?! At least the zombies in Left 4 Dead clock a respectable forty, you gotta lead them and shit!
Badger: Dude, that's because they're not even zombies! They're just infected! They got like this rage virus, amps them up like they've been smoking the schwag! Apples and oranges, bro, totally unfair to compare the two.
"It looks dead. It smells dead. Yet it's moving around. That's interesting."
— Oz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Dead Man's Party"
Tabletop Games
"I mean, are we talking brain-eaters? Demon possession? Rage zombies? How does it transmit? Through bites? Scratches? Blood? Bacteria? Radiation? Rock music!? I need to know what I'm dealing with!"
—A survivor who's seen far too many movies, The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse
"They should not be feared so much as they are, for they are created by little more than conjuring tricks at root. Without the Necromancer's foul spell, they would be nothing but rotting corpses. There is no powerful, inherent evil in them, as there is with a Daemon or a Vampire; indeed, I have no doubt that they are no more alive or intelligent than a lump of river clay. Wizardry could as easily animate the river clay to do its master's bidding, too, but Necromancers and Vampires have more affinity with the dead and so use that which they are best at.
— Waldemarr, Scholar of Nulm, on zombies, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: The Old World bestiary: A Compendium of Creatures Fair and Foul
The dead walk. Some of them run. And we're talking the really dead, the rotting dead, the up-out-of-the-grave dead.
Animated (or Reanimated) corpses run the gamut from mindless, shuffling zombies to people who seem normal until you look closely and see the tinge of rot around the ear. Some hunger for flesh, some for brains. Some don't eat at all, and just want to experience life again or hope to right some wrong. Others still seem utterly unrelated to the body they wear, poisoning the ground around them with the same corrosive effect that plagues their decaying or ill-stitched skin.
Ultimately, the result is the same: the dead walk, and they are harmful to life. It is undeath without the graceful predation and eroticism of the vampire, and without the tragic half-presence of a touchless ghost.
Animated (or Reanimated) corpses run the gamut from mindless, shuffling zombies to people who seem normal until you look closely and see the tinge of rot around the ear. Some hunger for flesh, some for brains. Some don't eat at all, and just want to experience life again or hope to right some wrong. Others still seem utterly unrelated to the body they wear, poisoning the ground around them with the same corrosive effect that plagues their decaying or ill-stitched skin.
Ultimately, the result is the same: the dead walk, and they are harmful to life. It is undeath without the graceful predation and eroticism of the vampire, and without the tragic half-presence of a touchless ghost.
—Hunter: The Vigil, First Edition corebook
Video Games
The dead walk. Say the sentence, sweetling. Just as impossible as anything else that has happened to you since the bee, yet it sits on your tongue easier. You are not that surprised. It is weird how much it is not weird. They have shambled through the zeitgeist of your species for so long. The dead that walk.
—The Buzzing, The Secret World
"I may be a clone, but I'm not a zombie like the rest."
—Jellien Plankton, Around the Clock at Bikini Bottom
Other
"Is there an agreed definition of what is a zombie and how they get that way? Not that I know of. I think zombies are defined by behavior and can be 'explained' by many handy shortcuts: the supernatural, radiation, a virus, space visitors, secret weapons, a Harvard education and so on."
They surge through the doorway — a struggling, seething mass. Bodies upon bodies. Like a blown pressure valve. Fighting to get past each other. Grunting and hissing. Their hair falling out. Milky eyes. Black eyes. Fungus spilling from their mouths, ears, nostrils. Creeping out from under their fingernails. They smear themselves on the doorframe as they pour towards us.
Bloody zombies.
Well, not zombies exactly. Not risen from the grave, feasting on human brain matter. Not a seventies commentary on consumer culture. But as far as mindless automatons seeking to kill me go, zombies is close enough.
Bloody zombies.
Well, not zombies exactly. Not risen from the grave, feasting on human brain matter. Not a seventies commentary on consumer culture. But as far as mindless automatons seeking to kill me go, zombies is close enough.
—Anti-Hero, by Jonathan Wood
