YMMV / Zombieland

• Adorkable: Before the outbreak, Columbus was a socially-awkward, high-strung and neurotic recluse who tended to stumble over his own words. Cut to after the outbreak, not much has changed.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: The Big Four are all dealing with the zombie apocalypse and the resulting tragedy in their own way. Tallahassee is all about killing zombies in creative ways so he doesn't have to think about his son being horribly killed. Wichita screws over the guys repeatedly because she doesn't want to deal with all the death. Little Rock is adamant about getting to Pacific Playland so she doesn't have to deal with the fact that everyone she knows is dead, other than Wichita (and Wichita is just trying to make her happy so she has a goal to focus on). And Columbus? Well, Columbus is actually kind of normal. Maybe repressing.
• Angst? What Angst?: Columbus really takes accidentally killing Bill Murray in his stride, and Tallahassee seems to get over the death of his idol fairly quickly. Then again, so does Murray. Might be related to surviving a zombie apocalypse.
• Award Snub: For the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, Jesse Eisenberg is nominated for "Best Frightened Performance" — but Woody Harrelson was not nominated for "Most Badass Performance"! Instead, Angelina Jolie was nominated for Salt, a movie that hadn't even premiered yet!
• Awesome Music: The opening theme, Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The "Zombie Kill Of The Week" scene, where an elderly nun casually crushes a zombie under a falling piano. It makes sense out-of-context, however; a TV series was originally planned, in which this scene would have been a Running Gag.
• Crazy Is Cool: Tallahassee's face formerly graced its page. Most of the awesome things Tallahassee does, such as fight off a horde of zombies with just two pistols, his zombie kills in the store, among other moments of awesome he accomplishes coupled with the fact that his behaviour suggests that he is crazy like a fox qualify him for this trope indeed.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The whole thing, but especially when Columbus bashes the clown's head in and his rubber nose squeaks.
  • The revelation that Tallahassee lost his only son being followed by "I haven't cried like that since Titanic" and then drying his tears with a stack of hundred dollar bills.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Unsurprisingly, Mexican audiences laughed pretty darn hard when Tallahassee comments "In Mexico, you know what they call Twinkies? 'Los submarinos.'" It's totally true! And there's various flavors too!
• Fanon:
  • It's universally accepted that Wichita, and probably Little Rock, too, had a crappy childhood.
  • Not quite as widespread, but it's a popular idea that the girls are actually stepsisters.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Amber Heard plays a young woman who transforms into a zombie and tries to attack Columbus after taking refuge in his studio apartment. In 2022, Heard and her ex-husband Johnny Depp accused each other of domestic abuse and engaged in multiple lawsuits.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Columbus mentions how he's glad that Facebook is no longer relevant in Zombieland. His actor Jesse Eisenberg went on to play Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Even better, Eisenberg wasn't familiar with Facebook at the time and needed the director to explain the joke to him.
  • Both Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone, who plays sisters Little Rock and Wichita, are respectively known for portraying a character named Olive before and after this film.
  • Just the fact that the actual filming locations are in Georgia, which would become the setting of the next big zombie show.
  • Abigail Breslin would've loved if her character really was bitten by a zombie and became one to have makeup applied on her. She was denied, but in 2015 her wish came true by starring in the zombie drama Maggie.
  • It won't be the last time Woody Harrelson stars in a post-apocalyptic movie where he plays a guy who lost his son during a plague.
  • There were attempts to make a television series based on the movie as far back as 2012, but they fell through due to negative fan response. Eventually, an almost identically titled anime series called Zombie Land Saga came to be in 2018...except it's a Deconstructive Parody of Idol Singer shows that has no relation to the movie beyond the title and the fact that it's a Horror Comedy about zombies, yet proved to be one of the biggest Sleeper Hits of the season.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "The Rules" were everywhere for a while.
  • Also, whatever city you live in/would head for once the Zombie Apocalypse hits is your official "Zombieland name".
  • Tallahassee drying his eyes on a handful of banknotes is often used on the internet as a .gif reaction image for mitigating one's sadness with your overwhelming good fortune.
  • "Amber Heard's natural acting" ^Explanation  In 2022, Amber Heard was found liable in all three matters of defamation raised over allegations of domestic abuse with her ex Johnny Depp. Depp was awarded $10 million (of the $50 million claim) in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages (reduced to $350,000 per state limit). Depp supporters use the scene where 406 meets Columbus and becomes a zombie in the movie by comparing it to her relationship with Depp with Columbus used as Depp, and people saying that Heard was allowed to be herself in this scene.
• Nausea Fuel: Zombie dribble.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Sister Cynthia Knickerbocker, a sweet old lady who drops a piano on a zombie for Zombie Kill of the Week. Six seconds of screentime, and one of the most memorable scenes of the movie.
  • The nameless guy dressed in a tuxedo mowing zombies down with a machine gun during the opening credits montage is also quite popular namely for being the only character in the intro to directly fight the zombies and looking fine while he's doing it. Not bad for someone who appears for ten seconds total.
  • The real Buck as we see in a flashback. You can see why Tallahassee doted on him, since he was a sweet kid and a Moe to boot, always laughing and enjoying time with his dad.
• Periphery Demographic: For a zombie horror-comedy (and so, marketed to a male audience) this movie has a very large female fanbase; good character development for the balanced core cast and the Adorkable male leads probably contributed.
• Retroactive Recognition: Amber Heard, who is more well-known for her role as Mera in the DC Extended Universe, appears briefly as 406.
• Spiritual Successor: To Left 4 Dead in a lot of respects. To Dead Rising in others, especially to how most players approached that game as a means of finding the most unique way to kill zombies.
• Too Cool to Live: Tallahassee subverts this, but Bill Murray does not.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In the audio commentary, the makers have expressed regret at not making the final confrontation between Columbus and the zombie-clown last longer for a stronger payoff given the effective establishment of clowns being his biggest fear (even more than zombies).
• The Woobie:
  • Columbus has elements of this. He clearly had not much of a life before the zombie outbreak, and even Wichita (who's still a Jerkass at this point) feels sorry for him after she reveals Columbus, Ohio is in ruins and that his parents are either zombies or dead.
  • Tallahassee, when it's revealed he lost his puppy to the zombies. That's sad enough in itself but when it's revealed it wasn't his puppy, but his SON....

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