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Fan Works
Rinku: [to Skull Kid] Get up, buddy! No time to just lay around!
Sidon: That's what respectable dead people are supposed to do!!!
Rinku: Careful. He doesn't like getting accused of respectability.
Sidon: That's what respectable dead people are supposed to do!!!
Rinku: Careful. He doesn't like getting accused of respectability.
— A Tale of Two Rulers, p.235
Film
"We are not among the living, so we cannot die - but neither are we dead."
— Captain Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Literature
They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.
Stalker: A week ago... Something strange happened.
Persephone: What was that?
Stalker: I died.
Persephone: What was that?
Stalker: I died.
— Tasakeru
Music
Hail to thee, our infantry!
still brave beyond the grave!
All sworn the Eternal Vow
the time to strike is NOW!
still brave beyond the grave!
All sworn the Eternal Vow
the time to strike is NOW!
— Manowar, "Battle Hymn"
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grisly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
The funk of forty thousand years
And grisly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
— Vincent Price, verse from the rap at the end of Michael Jackson's "Thriller"
"Do you ever think of the undead? The ghostly ones crowded under their gravestones? The restless dead, millions of them, there under the ground?"
— Arch Oboler, "Introduction to Horror" (from the 1962 album Drop Dead! An Exercise in Horror)
Tabletop Games
"Your deaths shall serve where your lives could not."
— Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle, at the Damnation of Hive Sibullus, Warhammer 40,000
When I was in high school my teacher told me that there are more people alive today than have ever lived. Don't worry; she lied, then got cancer. (Not my fault.) We live atop a mountain of corpses. The Earth is swimming in humans, above and below the ground, so when I see you trying to raise the dead, I'm torn. On the one hand, I recognize your despair. On the other hand, do you really want to spend the rest of the week fending off a Zombie Apocalypse as the Earth vomits up her dead? AGAIN? Come on, man, think this through: every time you try this, we end up fighting zombies. I hate zombies. Just put the syringe down.
In the Known World, the dead do not rest easy. Vampires lurk in haunted castles in the sinister forests of Sylvania. Necromancers seek to escape their mortality by searching for forbidden knowledge within the pages of accursed books. In lost pyramids buried beneath the desert sands of the Kingdom of the Dead, the Liche Lords rule over legions of corpses, their servants as they were in life. Armies slain in the poisoned wilderness of the Chaos Wastes do not lie dead as others do. Often they return to a ghastly unlife and bring terror to former comrades among the boundaries of Kislev. In he musty crypts of dead noblemen, tomb robbers freeze in terror when they hear the clink of silver rings and movement behind them. And behind all this towers the gigantic shadowy figure of Nagash, the Great Necromancer, who in ancient days rivalled and challenged the gods themselves.
—Warhammer: Undead Army Book (4th edition)
Theatre
Life after life, you won't need flowers on your grave.
You won't need prayers; you have no mortal soul to save.
You won't need prayers; you have no mortal soul to save.
— Dracula The Musical
Video Games
Fear not the dead. Would you quail before some addled crone, or palsied infant? These are victims, not victors.
"You know that line they feed you in boot camp, "You can rest when you're dead"? Complete bullshit!"
"These stones. Always in their combat arenas. Do they have a strengthening function? Or are they mere legacy of a forgotten time and realm? The Hive never stopped honing their strength. They missed the point of being dead! Haha, ahh, I've heard it said that 'that which does not kill you makes you stronger', but what does that mean in the face of immortality?"
— Toland the Shattered, Destiny
The dead walk. Hide while you still can!
Webcomics
"Outsmarted by the undead. Another proud moment for our band of heroes."
— Gimli, DM of the Rings
Doctor: Pete, your heart stopped.
Pete: So?
Doctor: So? It stayed stopped for three days!
Pete: I don't see how this is a problem.
Doctor: Hell, Pete, is it even beating now?
[Beat Panel]
Pete: No.
Pete: So?
Doctor: So? It stayed stopped for three days!
Pete: I don't see how this is a problem.
Doctor: Hell, Pete, is it even beating now?
[Beat Panel]
Pete: No.
Web Original
These days, it's kinda hard just to make the buried stay
Our subject's not alive, but he fakes it anyway
We told him he was dead, and he'd better lie down
But he just waved at us as he shambled into town
Our subject's not alive, but he fakes it anyway
We told him he was dead, and he'd better lie down
But he just waved at us as he shambled into town
— "Pretty Spry (For A Dead Guy)"
(For A Dead Guy)" Western Animation
"I hate the undead. All dead, but yet still alive. Makes a mockery of me job."
— The Grim Reaper, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
