Video Game / The Last Stand

The Last Stand is a series of zombie survival Flash games, made by Con Artist Games (who also made Warfare 1917 and Warfare 1944) for Armor Games.

The games have a loose continuity that follows a survivor (or group of survivors) as they attempt to scavenge and survive in and around various settlements, and, eventually, Union City, a metropolitan area that has been overrun with the dead.

The franchise includes the following titles:

• The Last Stand follows a survivor named Jack, who tries to hold off waves of the undead until he is rescued. His barricade is besieged by a horde of flesh-eating zombies every night, and the player must defend the barricade and then allocate search parties during the daytime to find more weapons and survivors, as well as repair the barricade from any damage it may have taken last night.
• The sequel, The Last Stand 2 once again follows Jack (who has survived a helicopter crash after seemingly escaping to safety at the end of the previous game), and must gather supplies and travel across the country to Union City within 40 days, in order to catch the last evacuation boat. Much like in the last game, players defend their barricades at night and search for survivors and weapons in the daytime, only now supplies need to be gathered and a travel route planned.
• The Last Stand: Union City follows the events of The Last Stand 2, but does not feature Jack in a playable role — this time, the plot follows a custom character the player creates, complete with various skills and attributes that can be upgraded. Union City includes RPG elements, with XP and an optional system of food and sleep management. The game begins with you returning to your apartment in Union City after a long day's work when you run over something and crash. Exiting the car, you find the neighborhood overrun by the undead. The player must scour the city and fight their way through the zombie hordes to find their spouse, and from there, escape Union City.
• The Last Stand: Dead Zone, is set in Union City After the End, now called the "Dead Zone." It focuses on the attempts of the survivors still in the area to survive being Left for Dead by the government and features a mix of Real-Time Strategy with Isometric Projection. The game launched on Facebook, Kongregate, and Armor Games in 2012, though its servers were shut down at the end of 2020 due to the end of support for Adobe Flash Player.
• The Last Stand: Aftermath is a single-player roguelike (release date November 16th, 2021.) that follows a group of survivors in the post-apocalypse who must fight to survive in the ruins of civilization — and this time, all of the survivors are infected, meaning it's a question of when, not if, they perish. Players can unlock new perks and rewards when their character dies, along with an "undeath" mechanic that players who risk it all with new mutations.

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This series provides examples of:

• Action Survivor: Jack, the protagonist of the first two titles, who at the start of the series was just a random survivor who found a pistol and had the idea to hole up in an isolated barricade somewhere. As he slowly managed to survive, scavenge, and recruit others to his cause, Jack became one of the most successful individuals to have thrived in the zombie apocalypse, having survived the events of 1 and 2 to eventually become a major leading figure in the survivor community as of Aftermath.
• Aerosol Flamethrower: The Flame Can in the alpha versions of Union City.
• A.K.A.-47: Quite a few weapons get fake names in Union City, and Dead Zone brings it up to eleven. Some weapons do get to keep their real names including, ironically enough, the AK-47.
• Allegedly Free Game: Dead Zone, in the style of many other browser-based strategy games. You can play entirely for free, but build times, upgrade times and wait times between missions increase quite rapidly as the levels rise, to the point that you'll eventually be waiting several hours for your survivors to return or weeks for buildings to upgrade unless you spend Fuel to speed things up. It's possible to scavenge Fuel in-game without paying anything, but it is quite rare and there is a limit on how much that can be obtained per day. Building and supplying a F.U.E.L. Generator will also provide a small amount over a period of 2 days, but this is still far slower than simply paying for it. That being said, two of the bribes, the Deathmobile Upgrade and the Inventory Upgrade, are permanent and can save one plenty of time in the long run, providing that one is willing to pay the $30 that each upgrade costs.
• Annoying Arrows: Averted. The Compound Bow in The Last Stand 2 and Union City does a lot of damage, and can often One-Hit Kill zombies if they're hit in the right place. Also, in Dead Zone, Cross/bows cost little ammo (cross 20, standard 5) and are silent and fairly quick to reload (vests can enhance the speed further). Hiding a survivor with a bow in the middle of a compound to catch some raiders off-guard can be quite funny.
• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • In The Last Stand, certain weapons can be found in the hands of specific zombie types (e.g. zombie cops will carry Magnums, bikers have Shotguns, and Army zombies carry M4A1s), ensuring that you will find them eventually by killing the first enemy that carries them. These spawn on Days 3, 6, and 17, respectively, meaning that these specific weapons are unmissable.
  • The first two titles gained a checkpoint system when re-released as part of the Legacy Collection on Steam, allowing you to restart from the beginning of the latest night should you die. As the cherry on top, it also respawns the other survivors who have died to weapon zombies before you yourself fell.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Besides the waiting times for missions, if the player decides to take a long break (at least 8 hours or so) and then return, Dead Zone will reward the player by granting double XP until they earn half of their current XP.
• Apocalypse How: Regional/Societal Disruption at least. While there were evacuation planes and ships going somewhere in The Last Stand 2, they have been stopped by the events of Union City. It's also unknown how extensive or how severe the outbreak is. We learn from the timeline in Dead Zone that planes were flying over the city, likely HERC recon planes, for several weeks after the city was overrun. Later, attack planes bombed both zombies and survivors. After about 200 days, they stopped appearing, but automated defense turrets were found encircling the city, keeping both the zombies and the survivors trapped within.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. It makes the zombie Immune to Bullets (in the first three games), at least where it's covered by the armor. In Union City, it also reduces all melee damage to 1, again, where it's covered by the armor (and the Riot Shield-carrying police zombies are one of the most annoying opponents), though the most powerful guns as well as explosives will punch through the armor. Union City and Dead Zone allow the player to wear armor as well, reducing the amount of damage they take from zombies and human opponents.
• Artifact Title: No Last Stands for you in Union City or Dead Zone, unless something goes horribly wrong.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The other survivors in your group leave a lot to be desired. In the original duology, their AI is plagued with extreme tunnel vision, such that they have a very specific cone of vision, where they will outright refuse to shoot any zombie outside of this cone, no matter how close it is to the barricade. In addition, even if you give them a machine gun, they will only shoot in short bursts.
  • Your companions in Union City won't reload their gun if they don't have to, even if there is only One Bullet Left. They also tend to not be very good with melee weapons and have trouble fending off dogs and crawlers once they're close up.
• Asshole Victim: Richards, the new employee at Union Security in Union City. Before you arrive, he's run off and took the key to the company's armory, leaving them helpless without their guns. One sidequest involves getting the key back from him, and you find his savaged corpse in the subway. Once you get the key back, one of the other employees will say he's glad that Richards is dead.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The M249 from The Last Stand 2. It deals good damage per bullet and has an absolutely massive magazine size relative to its firepower. However, it also takes forever to reload, handles big crowds rather poorly, and like all ballistic weapons is defeated by body armor, making it a poor choice against SWAT and Army zombies. It is also located in the dead last location in the game (that is also a Version-Exclusive Content) just shy of Union City, meaning you might not even be able to come across it most of the time if your timing is bad. Contrast this with the RPG, which is also found in the same area, but does insane amounts of damage in a very large blast radius that one-shots anything it hits, thus letting it make mincemeat of zombie crowds, while also circumventing body armor, both of which the M249 handles incredibly poorly.
  • In Dead Zone, loading up the entire away team with weapons that used a high ammo count, especially if there isn't a lot of ammo in storage. However, the books Ammo Conservationist and Ammunition Annual help to reduce the impracticality of this strategy, both by reducing the amount of ammo used and by increasing the amount found.
• Backstab: In Dead Zone, any attack on an unaware zombie from behind is an automatic Critical Hit.
• Bag of Spilling: You finish the first game with an assortment of pistols, SMGs, shotguns, etc., but you start the second game with just a pistol. Justified, as Jack was involved in a helicopter crash in between the games and likely wasn't able to bring his other weapons with him.
• Batter Up!:
  • Baseball Bats and Nail/Spiked Bats are available in Union City and Dead Zone. The latter also has Aluminum Bats.
  • There's also a skill-boosting book called 'Batter Up!' in Union City, which boosts the Blunt skill.
• Bear Trap: One of three kinds of possible traps in The Last Stand 2.
• BFG:
  • In The Last Stand, an M82 Barrett anti-materiel rifle.
  • In The Last Stand 2, a M249 Minimi, also known as the SAW, and a RPG, both obtained from an overrun military base.
  • Union City has all of the above.
  • Dead Zone has all of the above but the RPG, plus several varieties of miniguns and a slightly smaller anti-materiel rifle.
• BFS: The Bloodluster and the simply named Sword in Dead Zone are large improvised two-handed swords.
• Bittersweet Ending: Aftermath. Your volunteer is not making it through his run alive, win or lose: completion of the first run reveals that Dr. Stedman was working on a serum to deal with the infection. It isn't complete, and in its current state, it deals with the infection by slaying its recipient, regardless of infection level. However, he did leave enough information, notes, and equipment behind for adjustments to be made, and with your notifying the Colony of its presence, it is possible that over time, a serum that eliminates the infection but leaves a not-fully-turned recipient alive could be made out of his research.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The brothers Jeb and Paul in the Whistler's Forest area. They pretend to be traveling with the couple of Clarence and Fern in their minivan, and once the player runs into them, they ask you to collect car parts for them — three cans of gas, a fan belt, and a socket set. Once you collect these items, they immediately try to kill you. Once you kill them in turn and talk to Clarence and Fern, they reveal that Jeb and Paul had actually kidnapped them and were holding them hostage.
• Bland-Name Product: The Chainsaw from the first two games was made by "Consvarna", a parody of the Swedish Husqvarna brand of power tools.
• Blind Without 'Em: Kelly, the Stan's General Foods store clerk, is blind without her glasses, so she asks you to find them. The reward for doing so is her becoming a companion for the rest of the game for as long as she's alive. Thankfully you don't have to look far for the glasses, as they are right outside the storage room she hid in.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: In Dead Zone, there are Premium Weapons that have a golden coating, as well as Holiday-themed weapons, from Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Independence Day, which are unique variations of normal weapons, and are often more powerful than their stock counterparts.
• Booby Trap: In Aftermath, several areas can have gun or explosive traps set that aren't always easy to see. At least enemies can blunder into them and set them off as well, clearing your way.
• Bottomless Magazines: In Union City, your companion has an unlimited supply of ammunition, so it's a good idea to give them guns either with hard-to-find ammo or fully automatic. They still have to reload though. Played straight in all other games, though again, you still need to reload.
• Breakable Weapons: Melee weapons in Aftermath have a Durability stat that will decrease with each hit, which will eventually result in the item breaking from use.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Dead Zone has a premium currency in the form of Fuel. You can get it in small quantities during your scavenging runs from time to time or from building and supplying the F.U.E.L. Generator, or in big amounts by paying microtransactions. It can be used in a lot of helpful things like speeding up actions, refilling your resources, or building things without spending resources. You also have to spend Fuel to craft or upgrade stuff in your benches. That being said, two of the bribes, the Deathmobile Upgrade and the Inventory Upgrade, are permanent and can save one plenty of time in the long run, providing that one is willing to pay the $30 that each upgrade costs.
• Bulletproof Vest: In the first two games, only certain types of zombies had them. In Union City and Dead Zone, the player's survivor(s) can equip them too. Zombies also occasionally have them in Aftermath, though fire and special armor-piercing guns completely ignore their presence.
• Chainsaw Good:
  • An Emergency Weapon in the first two games.
  • Awesome, but Impractical in Union City, since it's the only melee weapon that requires ammo.
  • In Dead Zone, it's simply a very powerful but very slow melee weapon. There's also a Mini version, which does less damage but strikes faster, and Ash's Right Hand, which has the power of the regular version but the speed of the Mini version.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Jack (and the rest of his crew) arrive to provide cover for the player character, their wife/husband (Depending on the player character's gender), and (if they had one) Kelly/Hank at the end of Union City, after having seemingly disappeared when the hole was blown in the military barricade.
• Continuing is Painful: Losing too many survivors and/or barricade hitpoints in a single night can make it immensely frustrating to continue playing. Since your survivors contribute both to the team's overall firepower and barricade repair, losing just one or two can mean a group wipe, and even if you do make it through the night, the reduced repair value means you will need to invest more points into patching up your defenses and much less into scavenging for firearms and resources, which can snowball into an unwinnable situation later on. Having a wrecked barricade and a lot of dead survivors in places like Claysburg or Aspenwood and you might as well restart the game altogether.
• Cool Car: The Deathmobile in Dead Zone - seems to be based off of a black muscle car from the late sixties, like a Cadillac Eldorado. It can instantly return survivors to your base, but this costs Fuel unless there is less than five minutes on the away clock, but if it is Upgraded, all mission return times are reduced - five minutes for manually controlled missions, and ten minutes for automated missions - and there's a cowcatcher added to the front, making it even cooler. Crosses over with Clown Car, because while the car looks like it is based on a two-seater, it can transport the entire away team, which can be up to five people. Also crosses over with Automated Automobiles, as it is possible to send the car to pick up an away team, even when no survivors are currently at the base.
• Cool Helmet: It is possible to find hats/helmets as well as masks for your survivors in Dead Zone. While a few are merely cosmetic, others add to your health, make you a better combatant, make you resist certain kinds of damages better, and make you tougher to kill.
• Cool Shades: In Dead Zone, you can scavenge glasses that increase the range of your firearms when worn. Some even improve their accuracy.
• Critical Hit: In Union City, and tends to cause quite a bit of Gorn if it's a kill-shot. Also present in Dead Zone, but minus the Gorn.
• Crowbar Combatant: Present in Union City, Dead Zone and Aftermath, though they're rather average at best.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Jack's presence in Union City and Aftermath confirms that the ending where the player reached Union City before the 40-day time limit is canon.
• Dead Weight: Fat zombies show up, Kevlard style. Later on, there are RUNNING fatties.
• Determinator: Jack won't abandon his barricade during an attack. Ever. Even if the player tries to get him to.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • The UMP45 in 1. It's the first automatic weapon you can find and can drop as early as Night 4, whereupon it will make Swiss cheese out of the zombies that are trying to mob your barricade. Actually finding it is considered a massive crutch among players, especially with how much faster zombies became when the game is played on more powerful systems, or as part of the Updated Re Release, such that if you still haven't obtained it by Night 5, you might as well consider restarting. Likely because of this, the UMP was relegated to a mid-game unlock in the sequel where it will drop in Claysburg, a huge Beef Gate of an area where you will definitely need it.
  • Sometimes you get lucky and a zombie drops a powerful weapon early on in Union City, like a Fire Axe or Sledgehammer. If you find an assault rifle or SMG though, it's best to give it to a companion since they have unlimited ammo.
  • If you get lucky in Dead Zone, you might obtain a Rare or Unique item early on. These tend to be quite powerful, and will probably last you quite a while.
• Downer Ending:
  • In The Last Stand 2, if Jack doesn't make it to Union City in time, it gets bombed back to the Stone Age.
  • In Union City, you find out your spouse was bitten. You both make it to a boat off the mainland, but it stalls. You hear a familiar growling as it fades to black.
• Driven to Suicide: Implied in one of the notes in Union City.
• Defector from Decadence: Dr. Phillip Best, the scientist in the hideout in Whistler's Forest area is a former HERC hematologist who deserted because he did not want to be a part of the horrific experiments that HERC was performing on civilians.
• Demoted to Extra: Jack, the protagonist of the first 2 games, becomes an NPC in Union City and is only seen at the end of the game.
• Devil's Pitchfork: Lucifer's Trident is a Halloween weapon in Dead Zone.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: The first two games of the mainline series have a habit of hiding incredibly powerful firearms at the very end of your journey to limit their usefulness. In The Last Stand, you find the M82 Barrett after you have found everything else possible, and the sequel has the RPG-7 and M249 discoverable at Fort Tran, a highly missable and optional last node on the map that even used to be a Version-Exclusive Content until the game received an Updated Re-release.
• Elite Zombie:
  • Fat zombies, armored zombies, and zombies with weapons in all the games. And then you run into zombies that are a combination of two of the earlier traits...
  • In Union City, there's also a strange case where zombies without pants do more damage and are tougher than regular zombies.
  • Dead Zone adds Bruisers, durable zombies that can always knockback survivors they manage to hit, and Rotters, stronger and green versions of regular zombies.
• Emergency Weapon:
  • The Chainsaw in the first two games. It's the only weapon that requires zombies to be near the barricade, and it has a large "clip" (unlimited in The Last Stand, in The Last Stand 2 it stalls after you use it up, making you "reload" it). It's quite powerful though.
  • Pocket Knives and Kitchen Knives are common in Union City and Dead Zone, though they're barely more effective than your bare hands. Cleavers are also available, which are much more effective. Dead Zone also has the premium Hunting Knife, the HERC-1 Combat Knife, and the Combat Knife, very fast but relatively weak weapons for the levels they're available in.
• Escape Convenient Boat: Union City has one in the form of the only available boat at its docks (left behind after the military destroyed all the other boats to prevent residents from fleeing the city) — and can be accessed (unlocking the Escape Sequence) once the player has found the necessary gear to blow a hole in the wall leading to the docks.
• Eye Scream: Many zombies in the original duology seem to have been subjected to this, with many missing eyes and showing visible, bleeding sockets, or having had sharp weapons impaled through where their eyes used to be.
• Fanservice: Subverted, the closest you can get with either the female or male protagonist in Union City is to have them wear a tank top and shorts.
• Fission Mailed: The prologue of Aftermath pits you against an endless horde of zombies that you'll have no chance of defeating. After your eventual death, the real game will begin in earnest.
• Firing One-Handed: The Uzi and Sawn-off Shotgun in the classic titles are held this way, unlike the other pistol-sized weapons that use a two-handed stance.
• Friendly Enemy: In the Dead Zone, the relationships between various players can have this sort of feeling. One day, Player 1 could be trashing Player 2, as well as the reverse, and the next, they could be swapping weapons, armor, and necessary components.
• Fun with Acronyms: The F.U.E.L. (Fabricated Universal Element Liquid) Generator in Dead Zone.
• Game-Breaking Bug: One encountered in the first two games, and is still present in the Updated Re Release Legacy Collection, where Jack will become stuck upon attempting to reload his weapon. Fixing this is as simple as quickly opening and closing the pause menu, after which Jack will begin reloading like he should, but it's irritating to run into regardless of build as it renders the player completely helpless against the hordes crashing into the barricade if one doesn't know what to do to deal with it. At best, this can mean taking a lot of avoidable damage to the barricade; at worst, it can mean several dead survivors from weapon-bearing zombies, or even a total loss from the barrier being breached.
• Gatling Good: Dead Zone has The 2nd Amendment that can be crafted during Independence Day and the Minigun only available from the Raid on Union Island. There's also a few other craftable miniguns/gatling guns, although some are only craftable during the holidays. The HERC troops in the latter will also be using Miniguns against you.
• Gorn: Zombies can lose limbs and have heads blown off, and Jack's death animation is one of the scariest ones currently in gaming, as well as being very gory.
• Golf Clubbing: A below-average weapon in Union City.
• Grenade Launcher: The M79 Thumper, to be precise. Union City only, and has an interesting feature where the grenade won't detonate until it's past a certain distance.
• Happy Ending Override: In 1, you and your group of survivors are rescued by the military after fighting off the zombies for 20 days and nights. In 2 it is revealed that your evac helicopter had crashed due to a member of your party being infected, turning and attacking the pilots, causing it to crash.
• Have a Nice Death: "After surviving X days, YOU ARE DEAD. (Well kind of, you're a zombie now.)" as you're being eaten alive.
• Heavily Armored Mook: SWAT and soldier zombies in all the games. They wear kevlar body armor and helmets, forcing you to aim carefully for the face, or waste more ammo and shoot at their legs. HERC zombies join them in Dead Zone, which also reworks them into simply having more health than other zombies.
• Hide Your Children: There are no children in most of the series, aside from a few mentioned in Union City in the notes.
  • Averted to a degree in Aftermath. All of your Volunteers are adults... but throughout the first sector, you'll find zombies small and quick enough to make it very apparent that the infection didn't spare children from its effects.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: While you can only equip 2 weapons at any one time and there is a weight limit, Union City allows you to carry a large assortment of weapons.
• The Immune: The intro of Aftermath establishes that at least a small portion of humanity, about 5% give or take, are naturally immune to The Virus, which prevents them from becoming zombies.
• Improvised Weapon: Quite a few. Exaggerated in Dead Zone, especially those that you can craft, and which the Engineer class specializes in using.
• Infinite Flashlight: In Union City.
• Infinity +1 Sword:
  • The Barrett M82 in the first game. It is immensely powerful, capable of One Hit Polykills when firing into a mob, and has an agreeable magazine size that gets reloaded very quickly. It's basically the Hunting Rifle on steroids with a touch of More Dakka. It is also the last weapon you'll ever find, if you do at all, since it will only drop if you keep searching for guns after filling up your Wall of Weapons. By the time you've found it, you're probably close to (or at) Night 20 already.
  • The RPG and M249 SAW in the second game are both hideously powerful but are only found in the very late-game Fort Tran, which was in itself a Version-Exclusive Content to Armor Games and inaccessible otherwise until the series was re-released as part of the Legacy Collection. Unless your time management is really on point and you also got lucky with supplies, it would be very difficult to reach the fort and Union City within the time allotted.
  • Union City has a number of weapons that are at the top of their class — and extremely hard to find, with most only being found in Lucky Drops or in unique containers. These include the Katana (Sharpened), M249 SAW (Military), UMP 45 (Spec Ops or Military), the SV-SMG, and the AK-47 (Spec Ops).
• Interface Spoiler: The first game has a Wall of Weapons with silhouettes of all the weapons you can get, except the secret M82 Barrett unless you are savvy enough to notice that the weapons bar still can be filled even after supposedly getting all the weapons.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: The player will probably be saying this, as rooms tend to be clear of zombies before a horde attack in Union City, as well as in Dead Zone.
• The Jaywalking Dead: Union City opens with the Player Character running over a zombie, and quickly losing control of their car and wrapping it around a telephone pole.
• Katanas Are Just Better:
  • Played straight in Union City, with katanas being one of the best melee weapons available. A Sharpened Katana has the highest damage of all the melee weapons.
  • Averted in Dead Zone, which has much stronger melee weapons available.
  • Just getting one in Dead Zone requires you to likely pay for it, but the customised version can last you for a while, being stronger than most regular melee weapons available for its level if you can make one. It will likely serve well until you get to level 20-30.
• Kevlard: What makes the fat zombies so dangerous. Their larger bodies mean they can absorb more gunfire before dying, assuming you're not shooting for the head. Having a blob of these large zombies mobbing at your barricade can mean a game over very quickly as they will keep bodyblocking for each other, resulting in very little damage being done to each individual target even if you're using the chainsaw or hosing at them on full-auto.
• Last Stand:
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin in the first two games. Except for your fellow survivors, who'll run away (temporarily) if the barricade is weak enough.
  • It is implied that Jack and his group of survivors make one to cover your escape from Union City. However, Aftermath reveals that Jack is not only alive and well, he's actually the leader of the Council that runs The End now. You even learn his full name, "Jack Davis".
• Land Mine Goes "Click!":
  • In Aftermath, land mines are present in a few areas. Get too close and they'll briefly beep before they do what land mines do best. If you're lucky enough, it can be a dud that you can strip for parts. If you're less lucky, it's likely to lead to Yet Another Stupid Death as they HURT.
  • A more unusual but (usually) more visible equivalent are strange, infection-spreading devices found throughout the game. Step too close and they'll spray out a gas that hits you with a status effect that VERY rapidly advances your infection. Hope you have an Antiviral either active or ready to go IMMEDIATELY.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Not for Jack, but for your barricade in the first two games. If its HP reaches zero, zombies start to slowly pass through the barricade. If they touch you - game over, though you can still clear the level if you manage to kill all of them.
• The Last Title: The name of the game.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me:
  • Riot zombies in Union City carry bulletproof shields that render them practically invulnerable to anything short of explosives or foot shots from the front.
  • A couple of weapons in Dead Zone come with shields that boost melee damage resistance.
• Machete Mayhem: You can wield Machetes in Union City and Dead Zone, and they're excellent at slaughtering zombies.
• Mad Scientist: It's not particularly well-hidden that something's up with Dr. Stedman in Aftermath. However, what ISN'T obvious is that he was genuinely trying to help humanity by trying to eliminate the infection, made enough progress to get a serum to a testable state, and even made sure to leave enough notes and material behind to where his work could be built upon, it's just that his methods were extreme and led to a host of additional problems in the process.
• Money for Nothing: In Dead Zone, it's possible to have more wood, metal, and cloth than you can use, especially since any gathered after the supply bins are full is wasted, and there are periods during which one can't build/upgrade buildings and can't do research. Luckily, one can simply use up excess resources and turn them into Medical Components, which can be used to heal up injuries, or recycled into raw materials when needed. The same can also be done with ammo, but equipping everyone with a firearm helps there.
  • Downplayed in Aftermath. It's possible to both buy all the unlocks in the Supply Depot and all of the Knowledge-based perks as well, but there's always a few random one-use buyables in the Supply Depot rolled every run, and since Mikhail's shops use Knowledge as currency, filling the perk tree just means you can buy more from him.
• Mook Chivalry: In Dead Zone, the infected are nice enough to send you a message that they are about to attack you. This gives you enough time to equip that new BFG that you got the previous day, place that new survivor in a safe spot behind the inner barricade, call back a couple of survivors that are on away missions, and perhaps engage in some chivalry of your own, like moving part of the outer barricade so that the infected can just walk into the place without forcing you to waste resources on repairs. After that, tell them to Bring It on!
• More Dakka: Lots of SMGs and assault rifles around, though the kings are the various LMGs and miniguns.
• New Game Plus: In Aftermath, completing the main story doesn't end the game, and even opens up a few new game mechanics. Justified in that you only find out that Dr. Stedman was working on a serum to eliminate the infection at the end of the run, and the lab he was at is the only place to reliably perform adjustments and experiments with the serum he was working on, requiring future volunteers to make the full trek over.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Besides the diary, which is not very informative, you get no clue about the details of the Zombie Apocalypse. This is averted in Union City and Aftermath.
• One Bullet Clips: In Union City and Aftermath. The Last Stand, The Last Stand 2 and Dead Zone have infinite magazines, so it isn't an issue.
• One-Handed Shotgun Pump: Due to the first two games sharing the same animations, reloading the pump shotgun in The Last Stand and The Last Stand 2 ends with Jack chambering a new shell by racking the weapon with his left hand.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Jack in the first two games. Thankfully averted in Union City and Dead Zone.
  • Also averted in Aftermath, but if you're not careful regarding managing your infection, your maximum HP WILL drop to the point where a zombie lightly sneezing on you can kill you.
• One-Hit Polykill: Quite easy to pull off in the original duology with either of the Shotguns due to their large spread and high damage, or the Hunting Rifle if one can line up several zombies at once. The M82 Barrett in 1 only further trivializes this, as can the RPG-7 in the sequel.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Some lurch, some sprint, some crawl, some wear armor, some use weapons, some sprint and use weapons, some sprint and wear armor, some sprint, wear armor and use weapons, and some are dogs.
• Pinned Down: It's possible to suppress human enemies (rival survivors in PvP raiding and HERC troops in the Raid on Union Island) in Dead Zone with sustained gunfire, preventing them from attacking.
• Pipe Pain: A basic melee weapon in both Union City and Dead Zone.
• Pistol-Whipping: In Union City with any weapon, though it only does 1 damage. However, it's guaranteed to knock the zombies back, which could give you enough time to reload your gun. Zombies also don't know how to use firearms, so if they carry one, this is the only way they will use it.
• Player and Protagonist Integration: Controller flavour in The Last Stand. Lampshaded: a "Somebody is controlling me!" note is written next to the controls.
• Power at a Price: Aftermath's infection mechanic gives you the opportunity to gain perks as your Volunteer's infection advances through each of the seven bars of their HP, and they can be quite useful to have if you roll the right ones. However, you're not getting the maximum HP you lost to get those perks back, to the point where it eventually takes VERY little to kill you, and if that infection fills the seventh bar of your HP, your seventh perk is the end of your run.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Normally played straight in Union City, but averted when you score a critical headshot kill.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender:
  • The protagonist in Union City can be either female or male. The gender of their spouse will depend on which one you pick. Characters will address your character according to their gender as well, if it is male, they will be addressed as "sir". If female, they will be addressed as "ma'am". Other than that, there are no changes whatsoever.
  • The gender of your survivors in Dead Zone and Aftermath only affects their appearance.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The survivors in all the games.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Averted. It's the fastest way to kill unarmored zombies, but shots at the chest or legs work as well. Zombies with helmets are resistant to headshots unless you hit them directly in the unprotected face. Leg shots are the only reliable way to bring down fully armored zombies. There is a game mode included in the premium Survival Kit for Union City that only allows headshots, though.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Averted. They're more powerful, but carry fewer bullets and reload more slowly than regular semi-auto pistols.
• Sawn-Off Shotgun: Present as a weapon in all the games.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the first two games, if your barricade is about to fall, all of your fellow survivors will book it out of there and leave you to your fate. At least they are decent enough to stick with you if you do manage to clear the horde by yourself, though.
• Sequence Breaking: Only story-wise. Jack's journal found in Union City mentions how his team went straight from Whistler's Grove to Jonestown and then Fort Tran and skipping Aspenwood along the way. Unlike Claysburg, Aspenwood is a mandatory stop in The Last Stand 2.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Lisa Granger's brother Terry Granger is implied to be one, he speaks in military mannerisms and Lisa mentioned him having gone off his meds before asking you to find him. Implying he was in the military and suffers from PTSD.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: One of the most annoying kinds of zombies in Union City. They carry riot shields and wear armored vests and bulletproof helmets, so you have to aim for the legs to do more than Scratch Damage unless you're using explosives. Thankfully, they walk slowly, never carry weapons, lower their shield to attack, and never run. They are a minimal threat unless you are in an enclosed room with many zombies.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Averted. They pack a lot of punch, but reload slowly, since each shell has to be loaded one at a time, have relatively few shots, and are inaccurate (first three games only). The Thor automatic shotgun in Union City is magazine loaded, but it's weak. It does, however, have the advantage of far more knockback.
• Shout-Out:
  • The name of the task where you have just found out your spouse is somewhere else? Another Castle.
  • The achievement named Pills Here!
  • Posters and signboards scattered all over Union City advertise products like Modern Battlefield 4.
  • The description for bottle caps in Union City wonders if they will ever be used as currency. In Dead Zone, the description remarks they're no good as such after all.
  • In addition, one of the achievements is called Bloody Mess.
  • There's a skill book that's named Where's Wilmo?
  • The way you purchase things from vendors (a man and his wares behind a chain-link fence and barbed wire, who tosses the items over to you) is directly lifted from Dead Rising 2.
  • One of the notes is from a person named Jill for someone named Albert, telling him to meet her in Africa.
  • The premium Survival Kit for Union City provides the Hell Slinger, an extinguisher-operated automatic crossbow.
  • The Van Buren improvised rifle, which is basically the Pipe Rifle from Fallout 2.
  • Marion's Trident, a triple-barreled shotgun from a 2003 horror-comedy film called Undead.
  • The Gears of Hoard achievement.
  • The Storage boxes in safe houses have a familiar shape on the lower left side.◊
  • Ash's Right Hand, a special chainsaw in Dead Zone that replaces a survivor's right hand. The shotgun is also available as Ash's Left Hand.
  • The Stars Wor™ Plastic Laser Sword, aka toy lightsabers, could be crafted during Halloween in Dead Zone.
  • The Sword of Sparta in Dead Zone is a sword in the style of 300.
• Shovel Strike: Shovels are present in Union City and Dead Zone. In particular, the Shovel in Union City stands alongside the Police Baton as the best blunt weapon in the game, being able to deal heavy damage and be fairly lightweight at the same time.
• Sinister Scythe: The Sacrificial Scythe and its upgraded Superior version in Dead Zone.
• Side Quest: There are many in Union City, and some even have rewards aside from experience points.
  • Completing Darnell the tinkerer's three side quests get you a heavy pipe, a heavy nail board, and a silenced PP9 pistol.
  • Completing the quest to find Union City Security's gun cage quest allows you to raid the armory for a few guns and ammo, which can net some powerful mid-game weapons.
  • Companions can only be recruited by completing fetch quests. Kelly the store clerk will become your companion for finding her glasses since she can't see without them. Hank the gunshop owner will become your companion for finding his father's rifle and bolt group.
  • Completing the car parts sidequest will earn you $500 as thanks from Clarence and Fern for saving them from the bandit brothers Jeb and Paul.
  • Completing Lisa's sidequest to find her brother Terry will earn you the Hellslinger improvised crossbow.
  • Dr. Phillip Best's sidequest to find 4 infected blood samples gives you a key to a room in the clinic in Uptown (The bloodstained door at the end of the first hall.) Which will otherwise be inaccessible.
• Sliding Scale of Continuity: The first three games have a Type 3 (Loose) configuration. Jack manages to escape at the end of the original game but is referenced as having survived a helicopter crash at the beginning of the second. At the end of 2, he arrives at Union City and is seemingly successful at finding a boat and fleeing the city... that is, until Union City reveals that when he arrived, he discovered that nearly all the boats were destroyed by the military to prevent people from escaping, forcing him to amass a like-minded group of survivors within the city (offscreen), which the player encounter discovers towards the end of the game. Dead Zone begins After the End, with the city described as still having form of life left in it and the survivors explicitly stated as having been left behind in Union City, but with none of the references to prior works.
• Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: Type I or II - there are rotten-looking zombies, but due to the fact we never learn anything about them they may be revived corpses as well, not just turned infectees.
• Sniper Rifle: Civilian hunting rifles are available in all the games. Additionally, Union City has the M24 military sniper rifle, and Dead Zone adds several more. The M82 Barrett Anti-materiel Rifle is also available in The Last Stand and Union City, and has a couple variants in Dead Zone. These guns are also the only non-explosive weapons that can punch through armor in Union City.
• Spread Shot: Shotgun class weapons have this effect in the first three games. Not present in Dead Zone.
• Sole Survivor: In 2, Jack is the only survivor of the helicopter crash that happened when a member of his group from the first game was infected.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Turns out humans are heavy, dead or alive, so running one down with a car at high speeds would naturally have the driver lose control and crash as the Player Character does in the opening cutscene of Union City.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: Bows are available in The Last Stand 2, Union City and Dead Zone. The latter also adds crossbows.
• Third-Person Person: The King, the gunshop owner talks in this manner.
  The King: The King has what you need friend, understand that The King can only accept cash, in these uncertain times friend, money is uhh, King. No trade-ins, no loans, no credit, it's all cash, cash, cash, baby. See something you like, go ahead and pick it out.
• Timed Mission: Encouraged, but not strictly enforced in The Last Stand 2, where you are given 40 days to make it to Union City in order to achieve the Golden Ending. Taking longer than that will result in a bad ending where Union City is firebombed, but otherwise won't change anything gameplay-wise.
  • A soft time limit is present and justified in Aftermath. The entire reason your Volunteers are going out into the zombie-filled outside is specifically that they're all already infected, and due to turn any time, so they have nothing more to lose. In-game, this is represented by the infection slowly but surely reducing your maximum HP over time (and getting hit, bitten, certain traps, etc. will make your infection all the worse), and while there are Antivirals to temporarily halt its advance, you CANNOT permanently stop your infection and Antivirals are both finite and can be difficult to obtain.
• Title Drop: In the first diary entry of The Last Stand.
  • The final mission of Aftermath is also called The Last Stand.
• Took a Shortcut: In Union City, all the NPCs that change location do this, including Jack in the ending.
• Trauma Inn: In Union City, sleeping in any bed will heal you depending on how many hours you spend sleeping, in a similar way to the newest Fallout games.
• Undeathly Pallor
• Undying Loyalty: Your companion characters, except when in the first 2 games when they tend to run away when the barricade health is too low, or in 2 when they get killed by a melee weapon zombie. They will stay with you for the whole game. In Union City, if you complete Kelly's quest to find her glasses, or Hank's quest to find his rifle and bolt group, they will be your companion for the rest of the game, unless they are killed, or you replace one with the other, as you can only have one companion in Union City. Heck, even the protagonist of Union City counts, they go through hell and back to find their spouse and decide to take them with them anyway when they discover that they had been bitten at the hospital.
• Unique Enemy: There is a sole clown zombie in The Last Stand that is only seen on Night 19.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment:
  • Averted in The Last Stand, you could get three weapons from zombie corpses (a .357 Magnum Revolver from a cop, a Shotgun from a biker, and a M4A1 assault rifle from a soldier).
  • Played straight in The Last Stand 2 and Union City, zombies can carry a variety of melee weapons, but you can't pick them up and use any of them. Also played straight for the various hostile HERC characters in Union City, which carry unlootable weapons and ammo.
  • Some zombies in later areas of Aftermath are carrying hand-to-hand weapons. You can't pick them up once they're dead.
• Version-Exclusive Content: In The Last Stand 2, Fort Tran is only accessible to those who play the Armor Games version. It is locked off as an exclusion zone otherwise, denying the player access to the RPG and M249 SAW by extension. Even when the game was re-released as part of the Legacy Collection, Fort Tran remained inaccessible until Patch 1.04 made it available to everyone.
• Walk It Off: Half the damage you take in Union City will regenerate if you don't take any damage for a while.
• Wall of Weapons: In The Last Stand. Subverted in that there's a secret weapon (the M82 Barrett) that doesn't fit on the wall, and instead sits on the desk below it.
• Your Head A-Splode: Zombie heads occasionally explode when shot.
• Zerg Rush: You are facing zombies.
  • In the first two games, zombies will always attack this way.
  • In Union City, after a period of time a zombie horde attacks. Outdoors, they just come in from the map edge. Indoors, they come in through the ceiling. They make an absolutely massive one at the end of Union City. It's literally limitless, so you'll have to make a run for it.
  • In Dead Zone, zombies will only do this if your survivors make enough noise or if they're attacking your compound. If your survivors are being quiet though, the zombies will just wander around.
  • In Aftermath, this is the typical result of firing up a generator. At least the game warns you ahead of time when one WILL be coming as a result of your actions.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Possibly, but information on the extent and severity of the outbreak isn't given out.
• Zombie Gait: Zig-zagged. Some zombies lurch, while others sprint at hellishly fast speeds.
• Zombie Infectee:
  • It turns out that a survivor in your group in The Last Stand is one, which starts off the events of The Last Stand 2 when he turns while in the rescue helicopter, causing it to crash.
  • Your spouse in Union City.
  • Averted in Dead Zone: A plot point is that any survivors left in the Dead Zone are either immune or very resistant to the virus. This is done to avoid Permadeath in a browser game.
  • In Aftermath, it is explained that all of the characters have a latent form of the virus, which will inevitably consume them at some point down the road. How, or if, the characters will be able to last long enough to seek help (if such a thing is possible) has not been revealed by the developers to date.
    • It turns out that you're not getting that help. The final area reveals that Dr. Stedman was working on a serum to deal with the infection. However, he himself is succumbing to the virus, and while he made progress, it's not presently in a state that does anything but kill anyone with ANY level of infection, and you find this out after he fully succumbs and you're forced to kill him in self-defense. Your finding out the serum's status the hard way ends the first run of the game, and future runs involve more Volunteers making the trek out to make adjustments to the serum, in hope that one day they'll be able to perfect it.

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