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The Film Series
- Crowning Music Of Awesome:
- Trioxin. Doubles as a Bootstrapped Theme.
- The first film is notable for its entirely punk-rock soundtrack, particularly The Cramps' punk/surf rock-pastiche "Surfin' Dead", and for its clever and haunting use of Roky Erickson's "Burn The Flames"; see Murder by Cremation.
- Best Known for the Fanservice: Scream queen Linnea Quigley spends almost the entire movie wearing nothing but leggings.
- Complete Monster: Necropolis & Rave to the Grave: Charles Garrison is a callous Hybra Tech official craving for world domination. Experimenting with the Trioxin 5 to turn an untold number of people into zombies for the Necropolis secret project, Garrison plans on creating an army of cloned bioweapons to subjugate humanity—in the past, Garrison exhumed the corpses of his own family members and turned them into zombified Super Soldiers for his research. When the zombies breach containment, Garrison takes advantage of the chaos to release the super soldiers, risking the lives of his own nephews for a chance to escape. Returning in the sequel as an Arms Dealer, Garrison tries to sell a canister of Trioxin 5 to what he thinks is The Mafia, caring only for his well-being and the money that he will attain with the Trioxin 5.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: The Tar Man, one of the more visually interesting and terrifying zombies in the film, to the point where he's been featured on shirts and pins.
- Genius Bonus: The zombie-creating chemical being named 2-4-5 Trioxin is likely a reference to Agent Orange. A major component of that is 2-4-5 Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, which also contains trace amounts of highly carcinogenic dioxin.
- Memetic Mutation: Zombie movies changed after Return. Number one: zombies want braaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins.
- Newer Than They Think: The Brain Food thing is often believed to have always been a thing in the zombie horror genre. In reality, it didn't start until this franchise came along.
- Once Original, Now Common: These movies are what started the whole "zombies eating brains" trend, which nowadays has become more of a cliché in zombie pop culture.
- Parody Displacement: Countless works featuring zombies, both parody and serious, have featured the gag of zombies eating brains, but good luck finding an average Joe on the street who knows this movie is the origin for brain-eating zombies.
- Sequelitis: The first is generally viewed as good, the second is viewed as a step down but an overall enjoyable movie, and the third is viewed as a good movie in the wrong series entirely. The fourth and fifth... they're Sci Fi Channel original movies.
- Woobie Species: The Zombies. They're stuck as resurrected rotten corpses in absolutely horrific pain while being fully aware of such, and the only way to relieve it is to eat the brains of innocent people, since even if they're completely cleaved apart they're unable to die.
John Russo's Unrelated Novel
- Complete Monster: John Carter and Flack are a pair of sadistic psychopaths and former convicts who use the Zombie Apocalypse as an excuse to indulge themselves. Having killed officers to steal uniforms to disguise Carter, they later take refuge in the Miller house, where Flack rapes the young woman Sue Ellen and reveals they intend to use the Miller sisters as "zombie bait." The two shoot a police officer, leaving him tied up so when the victim reanimates, he'll devour his former friend. Upon fleeing, Flack throws a young man named Billy to the zombies and he and Carter storm a mansion, killing the guards inside and taking the family hostage. Carter and Flack then throw them, mother, father and a 10-year-old to the zombies, gleefully watching as the zombies tear them apart while keeping the Miller sisters to rape at their leisure.
- Contested Sequel: Due to Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985) coming out, Return of the Living Dead essentially isn't part of the Living Dead canon anymore.
- Crosses the Line Twice: The scene where the zombie eats Angel is written like a rape scene. He knocks her unconscious, rips off her clothes and flings her onto Bert Miller's bed. And when he begins eating her, he seems unusually focused on her sexual organs and breasts.
- Older Than They Think: This does the "zombie baby" thing long before the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake.
