Raised By Zombies (also known as RBZ) is a Web Animation created and animated by Guy Collins Animation
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The series focuses on a little girl’s journey through a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies. This series is done entirely in Adobe Flash CS3 with episodes usually under three minutes, in monochrome and without dialogue.
The series is planned to have 25 episodes divided into three seasons, however the development of upcoming episodes have been rather stagnant with Collins putting the series on hiatus to focus on projects such as Kaizo Trap in 2014, and later, its own video game adaptation in 2021. As of this writing, the series currently has 11 episodes with episode 12 in the proccess of being written and animated. Episodes can be watched on Collins' own channel or Mondo Media.
Raised By Zombies contains examples of:
- Adorably Precocious Child: The main character in the first three episodes and flashbacks.
- All for Nothing: Despite the efforts of saving Perth from getting nuked in "All Living Things", the city gets destroyed by an earthquake anyway during "Vacate".
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Collins explained in the comments section in "Vacate"'s upload that the earthquake that struck Perth during the episode was not a natural one, albeit one caused by a mysterious force from beneath the Earth. The city was also bathed in a mysterious gray light.
- Also from Collins' comment on the video's upload, the reason why the Commander planned to nuke Perth in "Razed" was not just to wipe out the zombie population, but also to take out "something else". Whatever it is has yet to be elaborated.
- The main character herself. Exactly how she came back to life during the night of the apocalypse in "Impossible" and gaining the ability to understand animals are yet to be revealed.
- Apocalypse How: Class 0.
- After the End: The majority of the story takes place in a run-down city of Perth, Australia.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: Pretty well everywhere.
- Bears Are Bad News: For zombies. Subverted, for the main character.
- Bolivian Army Cliffhanger: "Found" ends with the survivor's den getting overrun by a massive horde of zombies. The main character is still wounded, her mother is lost in the horde, and her cat bites her in the breast to wake her up.
- Call-Forward: In episode 1, "Zombies", the girl was found inside a dumpster with a zombie lying beside it. Episode 4, "Family", reveals that said zombie was her mother, who placed her there while succumbing to her own infection.
- Came Back Strong: "Impossible" reveals that the main character died in 1986 and knocked on her parent's door in December of 2012. Apparently digging herself out of her grave 26 years after she died.
- The Dead Have Eyes: While stylistically different from the living cast, they’re still functional.
- Deadline News: In "Impossible", when the mother was watching the news before the power went out, a zombie could be seen attacking the anchorman on-air.
- Death by Origin Story: For the girl's parents in "Family".
- Delivery Stork: Kind of. One picks the main character up near the end of "Zombies", but she was already a toddler when delivered.
- Driven to Suicide: In the fourth episode, the family came across a building with two corpses slumping on the table, each of the opposite gender - the man was zombified while the woman wasn't. The gun that the woman's corpse held strongly suggests that she shot her partner out of desperation before doing this.
- Edible Ammunition: Doubles as Abnormal Ammo. In "All Living Things", the monkey from the third episode loads two bananas into its shotgun to kill a zombie right on his eyes.
- The End Is Nigh: Funnily enough the first episode has a zombie wearing a sign that says “The dead have risen”.
- Foreshadowing:
- The main character's drawings on the wall during "Food" features a whale and a warship - which foreshadows the climax of "All Living Things".
- A more subtle one is hinted at the pink butterfly; the only other object colored pink in the series is the girl's bow. Butterflies are often represented as a symbol of rebirth, and she is heavily implied to have been reborn in "Impossible".
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "Monkeys", when a horde of zombies ambush the main character in the park, her mother can be seen hiding in the bushes on one of the buildings, looking worried as the zombies break through.
- Friend to All Living Things: The main character seems to be this. Commanding pets, wild mammals, birds, and even fish, she even tries to console her zombie mother.
- From Bad to Worse: Infant mortality, the end of the world, the death of a spouse, and losing your memories and becoming a present threat to the people you love, to name a few things.
- Heroic Second Wind: Collins explained in a Reddit thread that the mysterious light emitted by the girl in "All Living Things" was this, albeit rather downplayed - while she was able to command animals to her whim, she was still wounded and bleeding.
- Hidden Depths: Many of the characters get fleshed out beyond what you might expect from a series of 3 minute videos as time goes on.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Subverted, the main character's backstory is that she's a girl who was born in 1985, died in 1986, and came back to life in 2012.
- Karma Houdini: Downplayed by the soldier in "Razed". Sure, he shot the girl and her mother and fled, but he was in the proccess of being infected when it happened. By the time we see him again in "Vacate", he was already a zombie.
- Limited Wardrobe: You’d be forgiven if you thought that she was wearing a dress, but the main character is wearing a shirt like a dress for much of the series. Up to eleven with Zombie Mom who’s been wearing the same clothes for years!
- Mayan Doomsday: The apocalypse took place some time in December 2012.
- Mood Whiplash: Prevalent in Season 1. For example, episode 3 has monkeys handling shotguns, then episode 4 hits with a flashback of the fates of the main character's parents.
- No Name Given: As with any animations Collins has made, chracaters were not given a proper name and he has described them with either a noun (the Girl), or via their definitive traits (Zombie Mum and Dad, the Commander).
- No Zombie Cannibals: Zombies don’t even target zombies that retain elements of human consciousness.
- Nuke 'em: What the Commander planned to do to Perth from episodes 5 to 7, much to his son’s objections. Luckily, it gets thwarted in "All Living Things".
- Our Zombies Are Different: While mostly they follow the traditional format many zombies exhibit sad facial expressions, and don’t attack animals. The difference is greatly increased in Zombie Mum and Zombie Dad who seem to still retain their human consciousness and personalities.
- Parental Abandonment: "Family" reveals that the dad died trying to fend off the horde of zombies. The mom saves her daughter, but not before being infected by a zombie’s bite.
- Pun: In "Monkeys" there was a foreground poster of a rather suggestive “Bottomless Magazine”. Also doubles as foreshadowing given that the monkey who took the girl's shotgun fired way too many rounds than a typical shotgun should have.
- Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Seems to work pretty well.
- Room Full of Zombies:
- "Zombies" has the main character, the cat, and the dog unknowingly stumbled upon one.
- "Food" has this happening on the second story of a mall, of all things, because the zombies fall through the ceiling.
- Splash of Color: While the shorts are mostly monochrome, the zombies are given green skintones to differnate themselves from the living. Red is used to indicate blood and bits of orange are used to indicate heat. The main character's ribbon is colored pink - the only colored clothing item in the series.
- Silent Movie: There is no dialogue in the series, but you can lip read some words in some scenes.
- Time Skip: Mostly at the beginning.
- To elaborate further, during episode 1, the girl is too young to walk. Forward to episode 2 and she is already a toddler. Episode 3 and 4 show her as a child old enough to fend for her own due to her guardian having passed away during the skip. A large time skip occurs between episode 4 and 5, with the girl now old enough to have breasts.
- To Be Continued: Used once thus far.
- Visual Pun: When one of the monkeys goes through a shotgun-laden zombie killing spree in "Monkeys", one of the zombies' head is blown off right behind a poster reading "KA-POW! - Mindblowng Christmas Sale!".
- We Hardly Knew Ye: We didn't get much background on the old man who takes care of the girl for the first two episodes before his implied passing in "Family".
- Would Hurt a Child: In "Razed", a recently-infected soldier shoots the main character, who happens to be a teenager.
- Wham Episode: Oh, so many.
- "Family" reveals the fates of the main character's parents - they were both infected when trying to look for food, with her father being outnumbered by a horde of zombies off-screen and her mother getting infected in the leg. The mother then placed her daughter into a dumpster to ensure her safety while succumbing to her own infection.
- The ending of "Discovery" reunites the girl with her now zombified mother, who appears to maintain her humanity despite being infected.
- "Razed" has the girl getting shot in the shoulder. She later spends the rest of the series (bar flashbacks) bleeding out, being too weak to fend herself, forcing her mother to take care of her.
- "Impossible" is by far the biggest offender - The girl was Dead All Along for 26 years, but appears to have been resurrected without becoming a zombie.
- At the end of "Lost", the mother gets shot by survivors, which then took her daughter away from her. She was unable to fight back because of her undead status.
- The secret episode "Redacted" reveals that the reason why the Commander has the girl's father locked up in his ship; He was researching on why Zombie Dad appeared to have retained his human consciousness in an attempt to cure his wife, who was infected yet exhibited a manner of a mindless cannibal.
- Zombie Apocalypse: As implied by the title.
- Zombie Gait: Most zombies suffer from something of this sort, even the ones that jog have a modified way of doing so.
- Zombie Infectee: Infection leads to death, THEN zombification.
