Video Game / Dead Frontier

Dead Frontier is an MMORPG set, as its name suggests, during a Zombie Apocalypse. It was developed by Neil Yates ("AdminPwn") and can be found here. The initial beta launch occurred in 2008 and used Adobe Flash; a 3D version using Unity was then released in August of 2010, and the full version continued to use the engine. In 2019, a 3D Unity-based sequel, Dead Frontier 2, was released through Steam.

In 2016, the pharmaceutical company Secronom began testing the cancer-fighting "healing virus" Nerotonin-4 on 109 "volunteer" subjects in a French lab. On June 28, the French Gendarmerie raid the facility and release the subjects. Hilarity ensues. When the dust and body parts settle (i.e., when the intro finishes), you begin your (mis)adventures in Nastya's Outpost, one of the last known bastions of humanity in Fairview, before venturing into the mutant-infested Inner City to hunt and peck for anything of use.

There is also a Dead Frontier: Outbreak spin-off, which consists of two games made in Flash, and released in 2009 and 2010. They play out like choose own adventures books that follow an unnamed and unseen male character as the protagonist. Dead Frontier: Outbreak involves our hero trying to get back to his house to save his lovely wife and escape to the countryside with her. The sequel starts off at a farm owned by the protagonist's father-in-law. Cholera has infected the farm's drinking water and infected many of inhabitants there, including the protagonist's wife. The protagonist is sent back into the zombie-filled city to bring some antibiotics to treat this infection.

These games provide examples of:

Tropes present in all installments

• A.K.A.-47: Most weapons were changed from their real-world names to this halfway through the beta.
  • In the outbreak games no guns are given any names whatsoever (apart from basic descriptions such as “rifles” or “pistols”)
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Played with, since every item is sold by other players. But some prices are higher than kites mostly because : a) they're n00b-traps b) the player doesn't want to pay to store his items and uses the market as a bank c) the players are dicks. 1000$ for a hot can of tuna.
  • Prices often increase for medications during outpost attacks, usually by higher-level players who can increase market values as they please by owning a monopoly.
• Allegedly Free Game: Ostensibly averted, but with each update to the game loot rates for free members have become lower and lower, to the point that a paying member will find far more stuff than a free member in less time, and it will always be of better quality than anything a free player can find.
  • Most new 'updates' as of late 2010-2011 have revolved around new (buyable) items that are impossible to loot in-game and only available to paying players.
  • While they have added in the option to buy credits with in-game currency, it is so ludicrously expensive as to be impossible to achieve without the artificially increased paying-member loot rates or literally hundreds of hours of grinding.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: With the update of character models, clothes are now lootable in Fairview. They only have a visual effect, but Yates said that in the future, they will give bonuses. That doesn't stop some people to run around wearing only their boxers and a Kevlar vest, but if you're lucky (or rich or ready to spend a few bucks), you can easily look like Bill, a Blackwatch soldier or John Marston.
• An Entrepreneur Is You: There are no less than five character classes designed with this in mind, but even among the more combat/scouting-oriented classes it's fairly easy to make ludicrous amounts of money by buying items where they're cheap and reselling them where they're expensive, or even watching the market for people selling items extremely cheaply, snapping them up, and immediately reselling them at significant markup.
• Antidote Effect: Averted with your healing items, since anything less than a syringe of Nerotonin-2 stops being effective past level 50.
• Body Armor As Hitpoints: Played. While armors have a durability counter, they only absorb a percentage of the damage; the rest goes straight to the players' HP.
• Body Horror: the special zombies, going from "weird" (the Leaper's tongue reaching his ankles) to "nightmarish" (the Mother, who appears to be a four-armed giant zombie until logic kicks in : she fused with her unborn child).
• Boring, but Practical: Melee weapons are very slow and weak, but they don't require ammo and don't create any aggro. They also have a very high critical rate.
  • Pistols and rifles can be deadly with a good build and don't build lots of aggro too. It's possible to take out a boss with a revolver without too much hassle.
• Boss Battle: The 3D version has quite a few, and they're MUCH more powerful than the Boss in Mook Clothing enemies. Thankfully, they only spawn in certain areas, which get randomized every few hours.
  • Flaming Zombies (Zombies with way more HP and speed)
  • The Mother (a pregnant woman who fused with her fetus: mommy punches you, baby spits gastric acid at you from a hole in mommy's tummy)
  • The Flaming Mother (Mother with HP and attack x2 and even more speed)
  • The Titan (Behemoth 2.0)
  • The Flaming Titan (Titan with HP and attack x2 and even more speed)
  • The Wraith (a Super-Tendril woman described as 'The nightmare of many viewers of Japanese anime').
  • The Flaming Wraith (Wraith with HP and attack x2 and even more speed).
  • The Giant Spider (the super-version of the Spider)
  • The Flaming Giant Spider (Giant Spider with HP and attack x2 and even more speed)
  • The Black Titan (Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and even worse than the usual one).
  • The Flaming Black Titan (Black Titan with HP and attack x2 and even more speed).
  • Finally, we have the Devil Hound, which has even more health and speed than the Flaming Black Titan and similar attack power.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The various forms of Green zombies. Each "tier" of zombies has their own associated set of Greens, all of which have higher health and damage, as well as increased aggro compared to the other mooks, and speed up as they take damage. Unless you can kill them fast, you will more then likely have a full horde chasing you while trying to gun, chop, or detonate the glowing bastard down, then get your five seconds of safety to pull whatever (hopefully) precious loot off of the corpse.
  • In the 3D version, there are several of them:
    • The Bloat (a really strong fat guy that explodes upon death)
    • The Bone (the lite version of the Titan)
    • The Leaper (The Smoker's and The Licker's hidden brother, who can one-hit kill)
    • The Reaper (a man with a HUGE blade for a right arm)
    • The Spider (a six-armed man that runs really fast)
    • The Siren (a two-headed girl that screams on top of her lungs to attract other zombies)
    • The Tendril (a woman with piercing tentacles for arms)
    • The Brute (The Spitter's hidden morbidly obese sister)
    • The Black Tendril, cousin of the regular Tendril that lurks in the Wastelands.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Several weapons and equipment are rather old, such as a medieval battle axe and katanas, a cavalry sabre, WW1 guns and even a SN-42 armor ^note A steel Bulletproof Vest used by the Soviets during WW2.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Effectively required to stay competitive at higher levels - the stuff available to paying members is ludicrously powerful compared to the stuff you can loot or trade for, and a paying player will always be better than a free player of equivalent level.
  • Paying players loot items from one tier above non paying players in the same area. In addition get $800,000+ in game cash worth of in game goods known as credits and get double exp.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: While it is stated that players have developed experience over time, it is questionable as to how even an extremely experienced human can fire an anti-materiel rifle/minigun while outrunning a horde of flesh-eating mongrels.
• Chainsaw Good: Only used by the strong and confident/suicidal; the noise tends to annoy the hell out of any nearby zombies. Its only upside is that you don't move any slower and that the better chainsaws deal massive damage over time.
  • It's also extremely useful as part of a team when doing a mission to kill X number of zombies - one guy with a chainsaw constantly running to draw the zombies in, one to four others to kill them.
  • With the new 3D update using guns no longer slows your character.
  • In the 1st Dead Frontier: Outbreak, there is a part in the game where the protagonist must find a weapon in his tool shed before going into his house in case any intruders are present. One of the options is a chainsaw, which draws a group of the infected into his backyard because of the noise its engine makes. The protagonist shoves the spinning blade into one of them, but its blood goes into his eyes.
• Class and Level System: Used with Point Build System; your class determines your starting stats, equipment, and abilities (if any), but the levels give you stat and skill points to spend as you see fit.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The zombies, and the areas they infest, use colors to distinguish difficulty; Zones themselves use grey, purple, and red, while the zombies use those as well as green. Note that the in-game map does not make the distinctions between the neighborhoods, but the player-made map on the wiki does.
• Critical Hit: These deal 5x the damage of a normal hit, making them exceptionally useful. Increasing your Critical stat will allow you to pull these off much more often. At maximum, a weapon can have 80% chance of critting.
• Critical Hit Class: Using weapons with high critical rate and having a high critical stat will allow you to become one.
• Cut and Paste Environments: It gets pretty bad after a while in both games.
  • The 3D mode goes a long way towards averting this, but of course textures and such are still reused. Certainly an improvement, however.
• Dead Weight:
  • One of the early game zombie types are male and female versions of fat zombies, they have more health than the regular ones but are slower.
  • The Bloat and its smaller variant are these, due to a buildup of methane gas inside them, which causes them to explode when killed.
  • The Brute is an obese zombie who attacks via vomiting and has a great amount of health thanks to a protective layer of fat.
• Deconstruction: Word of God has stated that it's meant to be a completely realistic Zombie Apocalypse scenario, and it shows.
  • The stuff you get in the Elite Shop is kind of insane though, like prototype indestructible armour built out of whatever scrap could be scavenged by survivor technicians and a 20-round .50 caliber automatic revolver.
• Easy Logistics: Averted, as food is important. Keep your nutrition topped off, you get an experience gain boost. Let it fall too far and you will get an experience hit.
• Everything Fades: Unless you can loot it, or are on a mission to get blood samples.
• Freak Lab Accident: Nerotonin-3 was a refinement of Nerotonin-2, both viruses created to cure cancer. The N-2 strain boosted cellular regrowth for all of the patient's native cells. The N-3 strain actually killed cancerous cells... along with all the healthy ones. Then brought them back with an extra limb or two.
  • The "zombie virus" is Nerotonin-4, believed to be a mutant strain of N-3.
• Fun with Acronyms: Many clans have names such as C.A.S.H. or some mega-threads titled as G.A.S.
• Garrisonable Structures: Any building you can get into, you can barricade and turn into a temporary outpost, allowing you to store your cash, access the market, and a few other options, at least until the zombies come knocking.
• Glass Cannon: The players. They can kill the zombie hordes with powerful weaponry, but all it takes is a few hits from them and their health drops to critical levels, if not outright dead.
• Griefer: Occasionally a problem. One popular tactic is to deliberately generate massive amounts of aggro and then lead the resulting pissed-off horde of zombies straight into other players.
• Guide Dang It!: The game has a very steep learning curve and more likely than not you will not be able to reedit your stats to use weapons it costs $8 USD or 800k in in game cash.
  • Averted, as there is a link to the wiki on every page in the game but in the Inner City, In addition there is an automatic message sent giving helpful hints on how to play.
• Hand Cannon: The SW500 and Alpha Bull. Then you get to the Dusk Enforcer, which fires .50 ammo, and has a twenty-round capacity. And infinite ammo.
• Hide Your Children: Averted right out of the gate. They're the weakest zombies you find.
  • Yet in another way played completely straight, as there are no child corpses to be found in the inner city.
  • Also, you find no child zombies in the 3D beta. However, there's something even worse- the Mother is basically a pregnant woman zombie who's fused with her child.
• Hit Points: Though presented in a typically vague manner like most Survival Horror games: The level of health shown is a percentage of your total HP, from Healthy, Injured, Serious, then Critical, with each representing a quarter of your health.
• Hold the Line: The main outpost is usually attacked once a day; your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep the damn things out. The defense game that fits this the most is defending the main gate, making sure that it doesn't fall.
• Infernal Retaliation: Flaming variants of normal zombies have around 1.25x the health and over twice the damage of their normal variants.
• Injured Vulnerability: When your health gets critical (<25%), all your stats get cut in half.
• "Instant Death" Radius: Several enemies have extremely deadly melee attacks that can kill players with ease, and it's therefore a better option to use ranged against them. Taken literally with the Leaper, whose melee attack is basically a One-Hit Kill.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Luckily, they work both ways... but still, road cones?
• Katanas Are Just Better: The penultimate bladed weapon that you can get without paying real money for or winning first place in one of two weekly contests.
  • The Forsaken Titanium Blades are twin katanas with no skill requirements to use them.
• Kevlard: The Brute, which has a good bit of health. Its bio states that "a protective adipose tissue layer has given the Brute the ability to take even more hits than a normal infected".
• Kill It with Fire: Subverted. They tried doing this. It resulted in Purple Zombies in the 2d version, they were retconned into much weaker “burnt” zombies for the 3d version.
  • And the burning zombies.
    • Which sprint at you and can take minutes of constant fire from weaker weapons like crowbars and .32 pistols.
• Level Grinding: Boy howdy, will you have to do this.
  • Level-Up Fill-Up: And you will be thankful for it.
  • Unless you start Bribing Your Way to Victory.
• One Bullet Clips: Reload time is based on your Reloading stat and the gun's own reload time, regardless of how many shots are still chambered.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: For a competent player, it is entirely possible to keep fighting even immediately after having been revived, even with just a bludgeon.
  • But even with full health, you're really only a 3-hit-point-wonder at best.
• One Size Fits All: It's an MMO, can you really blame them?
• Pet the Dog: Player run charities give out hundreds of thousands to players.
• Player-Generated Economy: Barring the Cash Shop and the Elite Shop, the only way to buy items and services is the Marketplace, where prices are entirely determined by the players who put them up.
• Player Versus Player: Currently has three uses: access to the elite shop for the top PKer that week, settling Clan disputes, and bragging rights. There's even a consequence-free PVP arena in every town for those who don't want to do it in the inner city.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender -Possible. This troper has done tests, and it seems that women tend to find more items at lower levels, and the men seem to do a bit more damage. Still, may be utterly and completely flawed.
• Random Event: Green zombies are Made of Iron, carry a single piece of loot more often than not, draw more aggro, get faster the more damage they accrue, and tend to jump you in buildings. Now, imagine seeing two of them on the same screen, three blocks into the City, ''for a level 1 character'. Thankfully, they drop usually good items upon death.
  • And then we have The Behemoth. He is also a random event.
  • Outpost Attacks are somewhat random in 3D. Suddenly there are 100s of zombies in every direction, just as you were heading home for a light snack and some armour repairs.
• Real Is Brown: Well, it is an urban wasteland...
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Depending on the player. Sure, they score criticals more often than semiautomatic pistols and do more damage, but most are slow to reload and only hold five or six rounds. The Dusk Enforcer, a cash-only item, however, combines both benefits into one expensive package.
• Scavenger World: Mostly averted actually; most machinery is pre-outbreak technology, outposts are usually just buildings that are easy to defend (with the exception of the starting area which is the size of a small village) and most guns are professionally made.
• Shout-Out: Several, mostly weapons:
  • The Grinder (a red chainsaw with the word "Ash" engraved on the blade).
  • The cricket bat.
  • The Amputator (a bloody machete) and the hockey mask.
  • The trench knife.
  • The Hannibal mask.
  • One zombie model in 3-D has got a blue hoodie and tape on its arms
  • Agent Wilkes' and Mr. Foster's masks.
  • The Leaper is pretty much a Licker expy, even its bestiary entry gives a nod to that.
• Shovel Strike: The shovel is a remarkably effective melee weapon; it's even better than the fire axe.
• Truth in Television: There is a Soldier class that can be played as. It gives a lot of bonuses in your various Gun skills. However, you get a permanent penalty to experience to balance it.
• 20 Bear Asses: One would think it would be easy to find blood samples from a zombie; they never even say the stuff needs to be fresh and un-coagulated. Pity he who believes this foolishness.
• Unstable Equilibrium: As an MMORPG, this is expected to an extent. Unfortunately, most new players can't prepare themselves for their first death and subsequent rocket-assisted kick in the junk. It gets worse as you level, but by then you usually have the money to recover a bit easier.
• Zerg Rush: Get a high enough aggro and this happens. Much more noticeable in the 3D version.
  • This is the signature ability of the Siren, which suffice to say you'll probably want to kill before things become too difficult to handle.
  • Aggro is the measurement of general aggression against the players. Aggro is increased by a) using loud weapons or b) randomly.
  • Happens during any outpost attack, where huge hordes of zombies will rush the outpost station area.
• Zombie Gait: Played straight and averted. The more aggro you rack up, the more energetic the zombies become in wanting you very dead. Listed speeds are "walk, power-walk and sprint," and some will get faster as you damage them.
• Zombie Puke Attack:
  • The Irradiated Zombies and Irradiated Longarms have one with mid-range capabilities.
  • The Brute also uses projectile vomit, but has a longer range than the Irradiated zombies.
  • The Mother also uses a longer ranged one thanks to a huge hole in her stomach.

Tropes exclusive to first game

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Of 325. Have fun Level Grinding!
• Action Bomb: The Bloats, Mothers, and Radioactive Rumblers will explode upon death often killing Melee oriented players (at least those with insufficient armor/health).
• Anti-Grinding: As you level up, lower level foods become less and less effective, forcing you to move to deeper areas to find better food and subsequently face increasingly stronger enemies. This heavily discourages the player from grinding on weak zombies around the blue zone.
• BFG:
  • The second-best machine gun is a frickin' GAU-19 machine gun. It requires max level in strength and high (100 not 120) machine guns skill to use it. It got taken out of the game for being extremely gamebreaking.
  • And then even the GAU-19 gets one-upped by the Wraith Cannon, an even bigger gatling gun that is said to be able to tear a Wraith into shreds in seconds. Considering its way higher damage output than the GAU, that's not an exaggeration.
• Continuing is Painful: YOU BET IT IS. It takes away all cash you had, takes most of your experience gained since leaving an outpost, and dumps you in the outpost in critical health. Even if you're a Gold member and have smartly kept your held money in the bank, you will suffer, because you will be revived at critical health where all your stats are sliced in half. What's that? You didn't know about the penalty? Too bad! You just got crippled and lost the cash you needed to buy bandages!
  • Don't forget a wait time based on your level, unless you're a Gold Member which reduces this to a nonexistent 5 seconds.
• Dangerous Windows: While nothing ever comes through them for now, larger ones still need to be boarded up if you want to make a Personal Outpost in a building.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Some players have had issues with not being able to attack while moving at a full sprint.
• Empty Room Psych: Most rooms have at least something from which to scavenge. The key word is "most".
• Fragile Speedster: Zombie Dogs have the lowest health in the game, but are faster than the other "starting" enemies.
• Gatling Good:
  • The second-most powerful weapon in the game is a heavily modified GAU-19 minigun, which has had its rate of fire reduced to 'only' 700 rounds per minute so a human being can use it - and even then it requires a strength of 100, which is literally superhuman.
  • The most powerful weapon in the game is the Wraith Cannon, dealing even more damage than the GAU, but firing at only 500 rounds/minute to prevent itself from exploding. It requires a strength of 100, as well as a machine gun skill of 120.
• Human Resources: The Corpse Gear, a recent new set of weapons and armor that replaced the Dusk gear as the Infinity +1 Sword of the game, is made of zombie parts.
• Instakill Mook: Leapers will One-Hit Kill any player they hit, no matter how durable or tough their armor is.
• King Mook: Many of the boss-level enemies are basically more mutated and much stronger versions of the mutant zombies. The Titan, Black Titan, Wraith, Giant Spider, and Devil Hound are basically boss versions of the Bone, Black Bone, Tendril, Spider, and Hell Hound respectively.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Most of the flaming enemies are ungodly fast and have great amounts of health.
  • Later variants of Zombie Dogs such as Blood Dogs, Flesh Hounds, and Hell Hounds have high health, move insanely quickly, and deal incredible damage at the levels you first encounter them.
• Made of Plasticine: Killing critical hits will morph your target into a spray of Ludicrous Gibs.
  • Only if you have inflicted quite a lot more damage than your target's total health, that is.
• Mighty Glacier: The Leaper isn't very fast compared to a good number of the other special zombies fought in the area it's in, but its attack is literally a One-Hit Kill even with the best amounts of armor.
• Min-Maxing: All but required to remain competitive at the highest levels unfortunately. You rolled a roleplay class? See you back at the character creation screen.
• More Dakka: The GAU-19, a helicopter turret modified for human use, puts any Warhammer gun to shame. It costs 300 US dollars worth of credits, but does 4 times more damage than the runner up, and fits this trope to well that it actually uses each bullet three times.
  • Machine guns in general are expensive as hell because of their heavy rate of fire and the fact that bullets cost an arm and a leg. It's cheaper if you stick to the SMG, though.
• Musical Spoiler: The ambiance changes just a little when you cross the border into a more dangerous area of the city, then ramps that up a little more when you generate sufficient aggro.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous:
  • The Spider, a many-armed, crawling mutation of a zombie. It has high health, good resistance to knockback, hurts a lot, and moves extremely quickly. Then there's the Giant and Flaming Giant Spiders, which are boss versions of these.
  • The Mother, a large, monstrous woman of a zombie with two extra arms- these came about when she fused with her unborn child thanks to mutation.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Behemoth. It's called such for a very good reason, given that it can reduce most survivors to a smear on the concrete with one punch.
  • In the 3D version it's called the "Titan."
  • Also, The mother, once it dies, the wraith (Seriously, she will kill you from off screen), and, of course, the new Brute.
  • Almost anything with the word "Devil" in its name sounds ominous, and the Devil Hound is no exception. It has more health and speed and nearly as much power as the Flaming Black Titan.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Most of the in-game references call them "infected," but players usually avert this.
• No Fair Cheating: Thinking of opening the menu in the middle of a zombie Zerg Rush so that you'll go AFK and they'll ignore you? The moment you close it the zombies will suddenly attack you en-masse for your cheating ways.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Leaper doesn't leap at all, and in fact can only walk with an awkward gait. According to its bestiary entry, survivors even argue that its name should have been the Licker due to its Overly-Long Tongue which it uses as a One-Hit Kill weapon.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • The Leaper, one of the upper level zombies, kills players in one hit regardless of their gear and level. The game justifies it by claiming that he's far stronger than he looks and that his outrageously long tongue (his main weapon, used like a whip) secretes an ungodly powerful toxin able to kill grown men in a few seconds.
  • There's also the Slender Man in the bonus event. Get hit by him and you take the same amount of damage that the Leaper does.
• Walk It Off: Averted. You're wounded? Better get some medicine and a competent doctor, unless you think you can endure it until you level up.
  • Heal Thyself suffered a somewhat similar fate - Doctors couldn't patch themselves up with expensive medicine in the field anymore, and everyone else has to use low-level medicine.
• Optional Boss: The Slender Man appeared as a secret boss during the 2012 Halloween event.
• With This Herring: Aside from some exceptions (the soldiers get a SMG, the cops a shotgun, the farmers a rifle, the cooks a kitchen knife and the firemen a damaged fire axe), every character begins with a sissy pistol, a handful of ammo and a pocket knife. It sucks as badly as it sounds.

Tropes exclusive to second game

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Averted since the level cap is around 30
• Anti-Grinding: This sequel averts this, as any item will act the same regardless of your character level.
• Brown Note: Two of the boss zombies in the sequel:
  • Fingers is a boss zombie has glowing eyes. Those attempting to shoot it in the head will be Blinded by the Light and even take damage as soon as they look at its face.
  • Choir is a boss zombie with many smaller faces on his face. This gives it a sonic scream attack that hurts survivors who are within a radius of it.
• Continuing is Painful: The sequel is a little bit more merciful than the first; it only takes away 50% of the experience you gained since last visiting an outpost, and sends you back with the 'dying' status, where your movement, aim speed, and attack speed is reduced.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Some players have had issues with not being able to attack while moving at a full sprint.
• Empty Room Psych: Averted this time since pretty much all rooms have something to loot from (doesn’t guarantee it will be something you want/ need but still)
• King Mook: Boss enemies are far more unique from regular zombies, but are usually near about the same size, usually.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Two of the boss enemies are this; the Tendril and the Roid Hulk are guaranteed to close the distance between you and them in under a couple of seconds.
• Made of Plasticine: It's not uncommon to cut off an arm or even the head of a zombie after a critical hit, but it will still hunt your ass until it's down. Even after you sliced it’s arms and head.
• Mook Maker: The Mother in the sequel replaces her Zombie Puke Attack with the ability to constantly spawn huge parasite worms.
• More Dakka: Can be done with automatic weaponry but in this game it’s a BAD IDEA, ammo is hard to come by and you can easily find yourself out of ammo, inside a small room with a LOT of enemies; precise headshots or melee weapons are far more practical.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Somewhat averted; while you still get named monsters such as the “Roid Brute” and “Tendril” you get somewhat cuter names such as the “Choir” the “Mother” or simply “fingers”
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Most of the in-game references call them "infected," but players usually avert this.
• Took a Level in Badass: The Tendril is an Elite Mook in the original game. In the sequel, she's now a Boss Battle.
• Walk It Off: Averted. Your character can experience several different illnesses injuries now; including: Bleeding, poisioning, broken bones, being set on fire and radiation sickness. All of which will kill you unless you find medical aid.

Tropes Exclusive to Outbreak Spinoffs

• Adaptation Name Change: The zombie virus (which is canonically known as N-4 virus) is only referred to once as the “psycho virus”.
• All for Nothing: The games bad endings.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The failure endings of the games are not cannon for obvious reasons (mainly the protagonist killing himself in both bad endings).
  • While you are able to choose what clothing you wear for the mission it has no effect whatsoever and is never mentioned again.
• Crowbar Combatant: You have the option to pick up a crowbar in both games, it’s a very good choice both times.
• Chainsaw Good: No, chainsaw bad, chainsaw very very bad.
• Drawing Straws: How the protagonist is picked for the mission into the city for antibiotics.
• Driven to Suicide: In both bad endings for the games the protagonist kills himself for failing to save his wife.
• Liquid Courage: You can request some in the second game before you make your quest for anti-biotics; everyone who is well enough to walk joins you in this drink. It doesn’t help much but it does help.
• Multiple Endings: Alongside the many, many ways you can get killed there is an ultimate failure ending and a victory ending for both games.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Averted, the protagonist regularly refers to them as zombies.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The zombies in the outbreak timeline are nowhere near as mutated as they are in the main games, justified as the main games are meant to take place at least a year after the outbreak happens so none of them have fully mutated yet.
• This Is Gonna Suck: The protagonist refers to the city as a “meat grinder” and he’s well aware he’s walking directly into it.
• The Alleged Car: Pretty much every vehicle you get your hands on in the stories either fails due to your terrible driving or whenever the vehicle feels like it.
• Left It In: Jesse Hopkins (who also voiced the original intro cinematic for the dead frontier games) at one point in outbreak 2 clearly forgets his lines (you can even hear him loudly snapping his fingers trying to remember them). Instead of doing a retake Admin Pwn just decided to put it in the final game anyway; either that or they somehow didn't notice.
• Too Dumb to Live: oh so many times:
  • Jumping out a several story building to skip the stairs
  • When your chosen group of survivors in the first game want to get a jeep which has a pair of zombies inside it, instead of killing the zombies (even though your group is sometimes armed) you all decide to simply try and drag them out instead as if they weren’t trying to eat you all. If you decide to join them (or help them) you will temporally catch the Idiot Ball and attempt to drag them out as well (getting inevitably killed in the process).
  • The whole second story revolves around the survivors not planning ahead for the eventual water treatment plant shutdowns or even treating their water supplies themselves (such as boiling it or chlorinating it) and nearly get their entire community killed because of it (successfully getting everyone killed if you fail your mission).
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Several times in the games, many of which lead to your death.
  • Your character is an office worker and not a mechanic; attempting to fix vehicles will never lead to anything good.
  • Jumping out the window of a multi-story building to skip the stairs isn’t the best idea.
  • Kicking a zombie in the balls doesn’t really do anything but get you killed.
  • Trying to do a pro-wrestling move on a zombie (especially when you’re an inexperienced office worker) goes about as well as you would expect.
• Story Branching: While not as extensive as other games, the choices you make in game can ultimately determine which ending you get as well as what (albeit temporary) alternate paths you get.

---