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{{trope}}
[[File:zz8vphb173_en_6925.jpg|link=Magic: theThe Gathering (Tabletop Game)|frame|"There will come a day so dark you will pray for death. On that day your prayers will be answered."]]
 
 
{{quote|''Zombies don't represent anything in my mind except a global change of some kind. And the stories are about how people respond or fail to respond to this. That's really all they've represented to me.''|'''George Romero''' (creator of ''[[Night of the Living Dead (Film)|Night of the Living Dead]]'')}}
 
{{quote|''If thou openest not the gate to let me enter, I will break the door, I will wrench the lock, I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors. I will bring up the dead to eat the living. And the dead will outnumber the living.''|''[[The Epic of Gilgamesh]]''}}
 
Within the past couple days or hours, something very strange has happened. Maybe the [[Synthetic Plague]] the government was working on got unleashed. Maybe a [[Hollywood Voodoo|voodoo]] priest's spell [[Gone Horribly Wrong|went awry]]. Maybe [[Applied Phlebotinum|an alien space probe]] [[Plan 9 Fromfrom Outer Space|broadcast a weird signal]] at the Earth, or [[Night of the Living Dead (Film)|fell to Earth and brought radiation with it]]. Maybe [[Dawn of the Dead (Filmfilm)|there's just no more]] [[Doom (Video Gameseries)|room in Hell]].
 
Whatever the cause, the result is the same; the recently dead have risen, ''en masse'', to feed on the living. With each victim they claim, their numbers swell, and no force on Earth can contain them. As society collapses, it's up to the [[Big Damn Heroes]] to fight their way to safety or keep shooting until things blow over.
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The collapse will also take place very quickly, over a period of weeks or months, instead of years. This prevents society and/or the main characters from adapting, and also makes [[Convenient Comas]] somewhat plausible. In the occasion where collapse occurs in a couple of months, a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier could realistically be expected to weather the entire outbreak start to finish in perfect isolation and safety. This will never be brought up. Characters will also assume that their portable radios have infinite reception and frequency range, and local dead air means a completely global collapse.
 
Subtrope of [[Our Zombies Are Different]]. A member of [[The Undead]] trope family. See [[Night of the Living Mooks]] for cases where zombies don't threaten the end of the world. See also [[Zombie Gait]], [[Everything's Deader Withwith Zombies]]. [[Raising the Steaks]] is what happens when humans are not the only creatures that can be infected by [[The Virus]]. The Zombie apocalypse is almost always a case of [[Guilt-Free Extermination War]].
 
The trope Zombie Apocalypse refers to any kind of undead apocalypse — the common traits of this trope are that the undead spread rapidly, wipe out humans primarily by eating or biting them, and are usually highly infectious.
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* The manga series, ''[[Highschool of the Dead]]'' features a bunch of typical high school anime characters put into a zombie apocalypse in which everybody who dies and was dead before almost immediately turns into a flesh-eating zombie. On a number of occasions, this manga pays homage to previous zombie movies and games.
** Notable in that the zombies are actually played as realistically as possible - the protagonists test and figure out that since the dead have no circulation, their eyes cannot possibly work, meaning that they find things from vibrations (throwing a wet cloth at a locker on the other side of a hallway will draw them to it); no circulation also means that with the local humidity, the zombies will decay to the point of uselessness in a little under a month (although nobody has a clue how the zombies are still moving).
** ''[[Highschool of the Dead]]'' also subverts the traditionally leftist/libertarian politics behind most zombie-themed works, and is one of the few that takes on an explicitly right-wing nationalist stance. An ''[[wikipedia:Uyoku dantai|uyoku dantai]]'' group provides safe and effective harbour for survivors (whereas the "normal people" undermine it), and the military is shown to be effective at containing zombies. There are also some scenes where the characters lament the stupidity or myopic priorities of groups of anti-government radicals and protestors. Speaking of characters, the main cast includes: the rich, blue-blooded daughter of the ''uyoku dantai'' leader, an [[Heir to Thethe Dojo]] with traditionalist [[Yamato Nadeshiko]] views and styles, a gun nut trained by a Blackwater mercenary, and the daughter of a police officer (and, by extension, [[The Man]]), while the head of the group is praised by the ''uyoku dantai'' leader for his filial piety (family loyalty). The anime actually had some scenes involving Saya's family altered because it became increasingly apparent to the [[Media Watchdog|Media Watchdogs]] that [[What Do You Mean It's Not Political?|the creators were trying to make a political statement with an unpopular group]].
*** The licensed English translation also tries to downplay the right-wing politics of ''Highschool of the Dead''. For instance, in one scene a character likens the Ukyou Dantai group to a mafia - in the Japanese Saya rejects that and defends her father's group, noting how it's a force for good in the community; in the Yen Press version, however, she only growls "we're so right-wing even the mafia hate us", which quite badly distorts the original point.
* Spoofed in an episode of ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]''. Alien toothaches are contagious, and if the sufferer bites three or four people, the pain will go away. In short order the entire classroom is filled with crazed teenagers with swollen faces and a burning need to bite each other and any non-infected that they can. It's like a very silly [[Zombie Apocalypse]].
* Parodied in the ''[[D .Gray Man-man]]'' manga. The Science Department created Komuvitamin D in order to help people work overtime, however it turned them into zombie-like people instead. The zombie arc was played mostly for comedy but there is one scene where {{spoiler|it is discovered that a ghost of a girl experimented on didn't want the Black Order to leave and infected them so they would stay forever as mindless infected people. However, Komui [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|starts reciting the names of all the kids that died from experimentation by the Black Order in order to find out her name, telling her that even if they leave, they will never forget her.]] It doesn't stay serious for long}}.
* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro Nini]]'', the justification for {{spoiler|the Plan 34 massacre is that the [[Hate Plague]] Hinamizawa Syndrome could cause a Russo-style Zombie Apocalypse if it started spreading out of control.}} The manga-only chapter ''Onisarashi-hen'' shows precisely what happens when {{spoiler|Plan 34 fails and the disease breaks quarantine: aside from a few isolated cases, life goes on as normal. The person who created Plan 34 deliberately lied about how dangerous the Syndrome was in order to get it approved.}}
** ''Higurashi Kira's'' second episode features a fog that zombifies the residents of Hinamizawa by brainwashing them and making them act hostile towards those unaffected by the fog. The fog was created by - you guessed it - {{spoiler|[[Nightmare Fetishist|Miyo Takano]]}}.
* Parodied in the [[Monster Mash|Thriller Bark arc]] of ''[[One Piece (Manga)|One Piece]]'', where pretty much every single zombie convention is shattered. Here, zombies can move pretty quick, they get tired, they have resorted to fighting each other on a couple occasions, and bite from them has no effect; plus, the giant zombie is actually [[Lightning Bruiser|the fastest one of the bunch.]] However, this does make sense considering these zombie are made by implanting the personality and move set of a living person into a specially modified corpse.
** Thriller Bark zombies feel no pain, however. They feel ''fear'' just fine, but not pain.
* In ''[[Dorohedoro]]'', [[Crapsack World|Hole]] gets a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] every year, [[Genre Savvy|and surviving it is as simple as being inside behind locked doors after midnight]]. This has been going on long enough that the braver ([[Too Dumb to Live|or stupider]]) denizens of Hole have turned it into a ''game'', with prizes for killing a certain number of Zombies and everything.
* In a ''[[Naruto (Manga)|Naruto]]'' Shippuden filler arc, a group of ninja has a special jutsu that makes zombies. It turns out that the zombie apocalypse facing the leaf village is {{spoiler|actually a diversion, and the real goal is to revive 4 powerful ninja monks who can use a lightning jutsu to destroy the village in one shot.}}
** Chapter 515 shows a bunch of dead characters being revived by Kabuto to use as his personal army against the United Shinobi Alliance.
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' has a couple of variations:
** Manga: {{spoiler|The Cyclops Army, "lesser homunculi" released by Father. They behave a lot like zombies, but headshots don't kill them.}} They also eat people, beg for "mama" and "daddy", and [[Uncanny Valley|look like]] [[Neon Genesis Evangelion (Anime)|MP-EVAs]].
** Anime: In [[The Movie]], the Gate inexplicably turns a group of Thule Society soldiers into zombies. They also have thick suits of armor. {{spoiler|The [[Big Bad]] has some knowledge of alchemy, and so she's able to control the zombies when she passes through the Gate. This results in armored, machine-gun-wielding zombies with militaristic capabilities.}} [[Badass|Badassity]] ensues. About their only real weakness is that they possess the zombie gait.
* Brutally subverted in ''[[Kara noKarano Kyoukai (Literature)|Kara no Kyoukai]]'', the zombies are around for about a minute before [[Badass]] [[Knife Nut]] Shiki shows what happens when zombie meets [[Evil Eye|very well aimed]] knife.
* ''[[Panty and& Stocking Withwith Garterbelt (Anime)|Panty & Stocking]]'' did this on their eight episode fittingly titled ''[[Title of the Dead|...of the Dead]]'' which parodies most Zombie Apocalypse tropes. {{spoiler|In a surprising aversion. The title characters not only fail to stop the zombie outbreak. But end up becoming zombies themselves. 'Course, as this is a gag show, [[Negative Continuity|things are back to normal the following episode.]]}} It should also be noted that in this universe zombies can [[Shaped Like Itself|zombify]] angels, demons and Ghosts.
* ''[[Franken Fran]]'' has a zombie outbreak on an island {{spoiler|it's actually a disease and they victims are [[And I Must Scream|unable to talk]] }}.
* ''[[Black Butler (Manga)|Black Butler]]'' has one on a ''Titanic''-sized ship {{spoiler|they're "only" artificially reanimated corpses}}.
 
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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** A later series also hints that the zombie virus is ''sentient'', with various zombified characters referring to it as "the Hunger Gospel."
*** Amusingly, this was actually itself made fun of in [[Marvel Zombies]] 5, in which the characters go to the [[Welcome to The Real World|real world]] and talk about how the trope itself makes little sense.
* ''[[The Goon (Comic Book)|The Goon]]'' is all about zombies, all are created by an unnamed Zombie Priest to be his army, most are fully sentient and can do pretty much anything (others are standard Romno) also the bulk of them are all former Mobsters.
* Amazingly, this even happened to ''[[The Smurfs]]''. The Smurfs started out as a Belgian comic book, and in the first issue, "The Black Smurfs", a Smurf is infected by a disease that turns him black, violent, and unable to speak. He then spreads the disease by biting other Smurfs, and Papa Smurf and the few other remaining normal Smurfs have to find a cure. This story, despite having nearly every element of the modern [[Zombie Apocalypse]], predated ''Night of the Living Dead'' by ''nine years''.
** When the story was adapted for the animated series (see below), the color of the "zombie" Smurfs was changed from black to purple, presumably to avoid any accusations of racism.
** The Papercutz translation of the original comic book story to English also changes the infected Smurfs to purple.
* ''[[The Walking Dead (Comic Bookcomics)|The Walking Dead]]'', a typical zombie story about a handful of survivors trying to seek shelter in an increasingly zombie world... if they don't kill each other first.
* Averted in an issue of ''[[BPRD (Comic Book)|BPRD]]'' (a spinoff of ''[[Hellboy (Comic Bookcomics)|Hellboy]]''), wherein a zombie outbreak occurs in a small European town and the zombies are [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|brutally slaughtered]] by [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass|angry villagers]] with [[Torches and Pitchforks|farming equipment]] before anyone else is infected.
* In ''Dead West'', zombies rise up in a town built on ground where a Native American tribe was slaughtered. Then a [[Lawyer-Friendly Cameo]] by the [[Dollars Trilogy|Man With No Name]] shows up and things get interesting.
* ''Zombies vs. Robots'' (and its sequel ''Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons'') starts out in a post zombie apocalypse world where man's former servants fight to protect the last uninfected baby.
* The Black Lantern Corps in the ''[[Green Lantern (Comic Book)|Green Lantern]]'' story "[[Blackest Night]]" are a particularly nasty variation. The zombies are reanimated by flying rings that are programmed to automatically seek out corpses. As long as the rings are still worn, they can construct zombies out of almost anything, [[Dem Bones|even empty skeletons]], so damage to the brain doesn't kill them. They are neither slow nor stupid, regaining all the skills and abilities they had in life, including any superhuman powers. The number of Black Lanterns in existence is truly Legion, recruited from multiple different planets across the entire universe. Worst of all, while Black Lanterns do possess many elements of their former personalities, they will all kill any living thing they encounter without hesitation or remorse.
** They actually have to kill people to recharge their rings. One ripped out heart, filled with one of the seven emotions, equals 0.01% power restored to ''every'' ring. Not that they need the incentive.
** Worse yet, even though they're magic zombies revived by power rings, their bites still carry part of [[The Virus]]. Hope the rest of the universe is more [[Genre Savvy]] than {{spoiler|Donna Troy}}.
* The series ''[[Crossed (Comic Book)|Crossed]]'' is a 28-days series done with [[Garth Ennis]]'s subtle touch. The infected like to rape people to death and do other absolutely horrific things. They do not lose their intelligence and they can talk. Oh, boy do they talk. The crossed will prey on each other if there are no uninfected around, and they get bored. Ennis calls this the most fucked up thing he's ever done.
* ''[[Two Thousand2000 AD (Comic Book)|Two Thousand AD]]'':
** ''Zombo'', had this as a background in the far future, where a zombie apolcalyse is sweeping through the galaxy, and being hushed up by the government. The eponymous Zombo is a human/zombie hybrid (DON'T TRY TO THINK ABOUT IT) created by the govenment to fight back. Zombies personalities are exactly the same as when they were alive, except they now crave human flesh. It's a weird story, even by 2000AD standards...
** Previous to ''Crossed'' Ennis wrote a ''[[Judge Dredd]]/[[Strontium Dog]]'' [[Crossover]] zombie apocalypse story called "Judgement Day". The necromagus Sabbat has zombies attack every Mega-City on Earth, overrunning five (which Dredd has ''nuked'') and killing three ''billion'' before being stopped. Mega-City One's response to the zombies, by the way, is "Estimate sixty million plus! OPEN FIRE!"
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Night of the Living Dead (Film)|Night of the Living Dead]]'' and its sequels. Perhaps because the original film [[Unbuilt Trope|predates most of the zombie canon]], it actually avoids many of the "rules" it is credited with creating. Some zombies in the Romero canon can move quickly, use tools, and show problem-solving ability. These abilities are increasingly developed through the sequels. Also, the term "[[Not Using the Z Word|zombie]]" is never actually used. They are called "ghouls" instead.
** The sequels:
*** ''[[Dawn of the Dead (Filmfilm)|Dawn of the Dead]]''
*** ''[[Day of the Dead (Film)|Day of the Dead]]''
*** ''[[Land of the Dead (Film)|Land of the Dead]]''
*** ''[[Diary of the Dead (Film)|Diary of the Dead]]''
*** ''[[Survival of the Dead (Film)|Survival of the Dead]]''
* The 2004 remake ''[[Dawn of the Dead 2004 (Film)|Dawn of the Dead 2004]]'' updates the setting and has a much larger cast. Zombies are also distinguished from the original by being capable of sprinting.
* The ''[[Return of the Living Dead (Film)|Return of the Living Dead]]'' film series resulted from a dispute between John Russo and George Romero, which split the ''Night of the Living Dead'' sequels into two branches. Russo only lived to make the first film with his new partner Dan O'Bannon. The ''Return of the Living Dead'' series is more campy and humorous as well as more grotesque than Romero's more famous films. The zombies have human-level intelligence, specifically eat brains rather than just human flesh, and are much more difficult to kill. The first film lampshades its departures from the original by acknowledging the existence of ''Night of the Living Dead'' as a movie within its world. One character even exclaims, "You mean the movie lied?!"
** The sequels:
*** ''Return of the Living Dead Part 2''
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*** ''Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis''
*** ''Return of the Living Dead: Rave from the Grave''
* ''[[Twenty Eight Days Later|28 Days Later]]'' is a zombie film with [[Technically Living Zombie|Technically Living Zombies]] who are afflicted with the "rage virus," something akin to super-rabies. Zombies are called "the infected", and can spread the condition through any bodily fluid transfer.
* In the Italian film ''[[Nightmare City]]'' (a.k.a. ''City of the Living Dead'') the zombies are radioactive,[[Blood Lust|drink blood]] instead of eating flesh, and can run.
* ''[[REC (Filmfilm)|REC]]'', and the American remake ''[[Quarantine (Filmfilm)|Quarantine]]'' document the first stage of a zombie apocalypse with an [[In-Universe Camera]]. In these films, the zombies are afflicted by a disease described as similar to rabies. It's hinted that a mysterious tenant intentionally created the disease.
* In Lamberto Bava's ''[[Demoni]]'', the creatures are more like monsters than zombies, but they work with zombie rules and may have been an inspiration for straight zombie films to follow.
* Blending [[Zombie Apocalypse]] with [[Our Werewolves Are Different]], ''Mulberry Street'' gives us a virus that's transmissible by rats as well as humans (''totally screwed'' was the phrase, wasn't it?), and turns infected people into rat-faced, rampaging cannibals. Subverted in that {{spoiler|the Virus goes into remission at sunrise, restoring victims to normal, albeit not until after the protagonists have killed off their loved ones in self-defense or mercy}}. Similarly, ''Reliquary'', the sequel to ''Relic'', has those affected by a watered-down virus (it turned you into a horrific cocktail of dinosaur/primate DNA in the original) turned into light-shunning, psychotic, rat/lizard faced things. The even more watered down version just turned you into something like a ''[[Twenty Eight Days Later|28 Days Later]]'' zombie.
* Italian director [[Lucio Fulci]]'s ''[[Zombi 2]]'' took the Romero concept and increased the gore factor with such novel touches as [[Everything Is Even Worse With Sharks|a zombie fighting a shark underwater]] and [[Eye Scream|a woman getting her eye gouged out with a sliver of wood]].
* ''[[Burial Ground the Nights of Terror (Film)|Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror]]'' takes this trope to its beginning phase, with zombies coming back as the presumable result of an ancient curse, and includes [[It Can Think|tool-using zombies]], along with the unusual use of [[Dawson Casting|an adult dwarf playing the role of a child]].
* ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'' plays the concept for laughs, while at the same time remaining faithful to the style of the Romero films. Like those films, it includes hints that zombies retain some semblance of their former personalities. It also includes a [[Take That]] against the ''Twenty-Eight'' series.
* Brilliantly skewered in the 2006 film ''[[Fido]]'', which occurs in an alternate 1950s that is in the heyday of a zombie post-apocalypse. The zombies have been tamed into domestic servitude by a control collar. This is possible because zombie bites do not cause a change. Billy Connolly plays the eponymous character, one of the most charismatic shambling corpses ever shown on the big screen.
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* ''J'Accuse!'' aka ''I Accuse'' (1921) is possibly the earliest zombie apocalypse style movie ever made complete with political commentary. What starts as a typical patriotic war story of lost loves, turns into a Zombie apocalypse when the millions of dead soldiers of World War 1, march home from the battlefield to lay the blame for the war at the feet of those that stayed behind.
** The same premise makes up Joe Dante's ''Homecoming'' (from the [[Masters of Horror]] anthology), where soldiers rise from the dead en masse to vote out the administration that sent them to war. It's only when said administration starts treating them like horror movie zombies that the violence begins...
* ''[[Zombieland (Film)|Zombieland]]'' uses the fast zombie variant. They aren't very clever at all except where required by the [[Rule of Funny]], and are pretty much limited to basic functions such as turning doorknobs and climbing fences and scaffolding, putting their minds at about "pissed off monkey" level. and they were created by [[The Virus]] and can spread it through bites. They're also seemingly immune to pain, leading to the first two of the lead's Rules of Zombieland: Cardio (zombies can run fast, making it important to be able to run faster) and the Double Tap (put another bullet into the head after taking one down to make sure).
* ''ZA: Zombies Anonymous'' aka ''Last Rites of the Dead'' (2006) gives a new spin on the Zombie Apocalypse: the outbreak has happened, the dead are walking the earth, but they are still functioning -- although mostly closeted -- members of society. The movie is a good study on prejudice, showing the new world through the eyes of the recently-deceased Angela. Most of the living prefer the dead to stay dead, but most of the "mortally challenged" just want to be left alone; there are, of course, extremists on both sides, the living who actively hunt down the dead, and vice-versa. The social commentaries aren't subtle, and can be quite agitating at times, especially during the climax.
* ''Colin'' (2008) plays the Zombie Apocalypse pretty much straight, with the eponymous zombie as the protagonist.
* ''[[Tokyo Zombie]]'' is a 2005 Japanese live-action Zom-Com about a pair of bumbling Jujitsu practitioners where zombies of the shambling variety first appear by popping out of a mountainous pile of garbage, toxic waste and discarded bodies called Black Fuji. Within 5 years all of Japan is covered in zombies except for a pyramid-shaped building inside a wall where rich people have gathered for safety and to amuse themselves with zombie-on-zombie as well as zombie-on-human fights to the undeath.
* ''Flight Of The Living Dead'' (2007) is a zombie movie which was clearly inspired by ''[[Snakes Onon a Plane]]'', since it takes place in the confines of a commercial airliner. The film's zombies follow the Russo mould, in that they can move faster than a shamble, but the incubation time for the virus varies wildly - some are infected and do not turn until a good while afterwards, whereas some are zombified almost as soon as they die. The most hilarious thing about the film is that [[Alien Geometries|the layout of said plane is completely screwed up]] (access tunnels and zombies clawing their way through the floor of the cabin are two of the most egregious examples). Also, the heroes are able to ''shoot guns inside the pressurised cabin'', which would be film-endingly disastrous if they hit a window.
** Unless the movie decided to be realistic in this regard, in which case the characters would just have to deal with an annoying whistling sound for the rest of the flight.
* The [[Zombie Blood Bath]] trilogy (1993, 1995, 2000) proves to be capable of bringing forth [[Narm Charm]] unlike anything you've ever seen.
* Heavily subverted in ''Dead Heat'', a cops vs. zombies movie with a [[Who Dunnit to Me?]] plotline. Police detective Treat Williams dies in the line of duty, but is brought back temporarily with a resurrection device concocted by the corrupt scientist he was investigating. No apocalypse is forthcoming and no flesh/brain-eating ensues, as the zombies retain their free will if they're revived immediately after death {{spoiler|and are compliant Mooks if resurrected a bit later}}.
* ''[[Dead Air (2009 (Filmilm)|Dead Air]]'' continues the tradition of virus-infected [[Technically Living Zombie]] films, with the infection being caused by a compound spread by terrorist attacks in the United States' major cities.
* The fan remake for [[Plan 9 Fromfrom Outer Space|Plan Nine From Outer Space]] seems to be playing this up, ''majorly''.
** On that note, the original had also had a (badly) attempted one.
* ''Stake Land'' takes place in a post-[[Vampire Apocalypse]] setting.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Raymond E. Feist]]'s fantasy literature has the Black Slayers: dead warriors called back to life using necromancy, or in one case, using the authority of the Goddess of Death. Once called, they are virtually unstoppable, where even severed body parts will wriggle towards each other to reassemble.
** Near the end of the Serpentwar, a magic user casts a spell that continuously reanimates all corpses in the battlefield to do their bidding. This has friendly and enemy soldiers both being killed off and rising again to fight for the magic user.
* [[Older Than Dirt]] invocations in [[Mesopotamian Mythology]]:
** In ''[[The Epic of Gilgamesh]]'', [[Jerkass Gods|the goddess]] [[I Have Many Names|Ishtar/Inanna]] tells her father that if he doesn't help her get revenge on Gilgamesh for turning down her proposition, she will break open the underworld and [[Disproportionate Retribution|bring up the dead to consume the living]], all of them. He, sensibly, agrees to her alternative. Had she gone through with it, it would probably have been the [[Ur Example]] by a couple of millennia.
** She does it again in ''[[InannasInanna's Descent to Thethe Netherworld (Literature)|Inannas Descent to The Netherworld]]'', sort of a [[Spin-Off]] of the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''. She uses the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] threat against the gatekeeper of the underworld, and after deliberating with Irkalla's queen (Inanna's sister Ereshkigal), he agrees to let her in, on the condition that she remove her clothing and jewelry at a series of checkpoints.
* Max Brooks' ''[[The Zombie Survival Guide]]'' is a handbook on how to survive a zombie apocalypse. Its advice is based around classic zombie behavior that is not quite rooted to any specific source. It breaks down the hazards and strategies in detail, from zombie strengths and weaknesses to effective combat tactics.
* Max Brooks' next effort, ''[[World War Z]]'' is a mockumentary of a past zombie invasion, conducted in a series of interviews with survivors from around the world. The interviews are ordered so as to take the reader through the war chronologically, from "Patient Zero" to the Zombie Apocalypse to the eventual human victory. The interviews are supposedly conducted by [[Author Avatar|Max Brooks himself]]. When ''The Zombie Survival Guide'' is mentioned and criticized, the "interviewer" says, "Oh really?"
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* In the [[Stephen King]] short story ''Home Delivery'', an object orbiting the Earth (either an asteroid covered with seriously weird worm-like creatures, or [[Eldritch Abomination|it's worms all the way down...]]) is somehow causing the dead to reanimate. The story was originally published in a collection of Romero homages called The Book of the Dead.
** Similarly, ''[[Cell]]'', another King zombie novel, has people turned into zombies by cell phones.
* In [[HPH.P. Lovecraft]]'s ''Reanimator'', Dr. Herbert West devises a chemical that will bring dead people back to life. Unfortunately the subjects either die (again) within minutes or turn into flesh-eating creatures that share more that a slight resemblance with your average zombie (they retain normal human strength and speed though). He eventually get better at reanimating, creating an intelligent zombie who can reanimate more bodies. The intelligent zombie then [[Turned Against Their Masters|leads an army of other zombies to kill Dr. West.]]
** Hell, the spine is their weak spot (as the head is the weak spot in normal zombies), since the chemical is injected into the spine.
* Jonathan Maberry's book ''Zombie CSU The Forensics of the Living Dead'' is a [[What If]] scenario in book form. The author has interviewed [[Real Life]] Police, SWAT, doctors, hospitals, 911, and even DHS about what they would be doing to react if the Zombies began walking the earth. Delightfully enough, all the agencies and groups interviewed in the book had already given the question some consideration and had strategies formulated. [[Crazy Prepared|Yes, even the]] [[Dead Rising|DHS]].
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* A good half of Clark Ashton Smith's work features Zombies of the non-contagious variety, generally [[A Wizard Did It|custom animated by necromancers]]. In at least one case they 'outlive' their creators and carry on with what they were doing before they died.
* [[John Wyndham]]'s 1951 novel ''[[The Day of the Triffids]]'', while concerned with genetically engineered [[Man-Eating Plant|Man Eating Plants]], foreshadows many themes of the contemporary Zombie Apocalypse. Society collapses after an atmospheric event causes mass blindness. The sighted and unsighted alike struggle to scavenge a living while being hunted by this new predator. Eventually the sighted protagonists retreat to the countryside and barricade themselves in a farm house, fending off repeated Triffid attacks. The book is heavy with social commentary and contains memorably hellish imagery of shambling, groping masses of humanity. The Triffids themselves have a rickety, limping gait and are slow moving, awkward creatures of little threat individually (unless they catch you unawares). In large numbers, however, they are a serious menace; able to force their way in anywhere and seemingly capable of rudimentary communication and organization. The most effective way of stopping one is to 'decapitate' it using special blade firing weapons. It has been adapted as a lightweight 1962 monster movie (casts the Triffids as extraterrestrial plants) and a more faithful (albeit stagey) 1981 television series, and then again as a TV series in 2009.
* ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]] Destiny'' reveals that this is how {{spoiler|the Borg came to be, as a result of two humans lost in the Delta Quadrant getting "possessed" by a starving energy being called a Caeliar, capable of manipulating matter as she saw fit. Then all they did was [[Schmuck Bait|wait for the locals to come wondering what that huge racket was]]...}}
* Another ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' example: the second ''[[Soul Drinkers (Literature)|Soul Drinkers]]'' novel features the ridiculously powerful mutant-psyker Teturact, who would induce these, then bring it to a halt while forcing any survivors to [[A God Am I|worship him as a god]]. His main starship has been set up so that it can self-destruct and provide a ''[[It's Raining Men|drop assault]]'' [[Zombie Apocalypse]].
* David Wellington's ''Monster Island'' and its sequels provide Romero-style zombies with an exception: if your brain is provided with oxygen between death and before returning as a zombie, you return as an intelligent zombie which the sequels call a lich. The dead are reanimated as a result of a scientist having pierced the source of [[Life Energy]], causing the world to overflow with life energy, reanimating the dead. The trilogy is available online.
* ''[[Friday the Thirteenth|Friday the 13th]]: The Jason Strain'' has Jason, while a "special guest" on a [[Deadly Game]], [[Halfway Plot Switch|being abducted by scientists, who want to replicate his regenerative abilities and immortality]]; Jason wakes up partway through the vivisection, rampages through the lab [[Gone Horribly Wrong|and is exposed to an experimental virus which reacts negatively with him, giving him the ability to reanimate his victims as zombies]]. Thousands of deaths later the virus is cured and Jason's rid of his new powers. Notably headshots don't stop the zombies - the head needs to be ''completely'' eradicated in order for them to be fully (re-)killed. Also, Jason fights a shark in reference to ''[[Zombi 2]]''.
* "[[The Concord Virus]]" is a rather traditional example of this trope. It's a short story, but it manages to get the job done.
* This was one theory about what some of the bad guys in ''[[The Abhorsen Trilogy]]'' had in mind, since hordes of zombies are their favorite [[Mook|mooks]] and they were taking thousands and thousands of [[Red Shirt|refugees]] into the country. Unfortunately, they were actually [[Apocalypse How|thinking a bit bigger]] than what Sabriel and Touchstone were expecting.
* Happened in ''Fire Sea'', third book of [[The Death Gate Cycle]]. In this case the effect was not pandemic but might as well have been (almost all the zombies were necromancers in life and simply animated every corpse they came across) and rather than being mindless they were sentient but [[Ax Crazy]] with hatred for the living (except for Kleitus, the leader of said undead, who was still [[Ax Crazy]] but also smart enough to have vision- he was gunning for ruling an entire ''zombified universe''.) Mercifully, they were contained on just one world of the series multiverse at the end of the novel, and in the climactic volume Kleitus was killed in battle and the rest of the undead were destroyed by what could best be described as "cosmic reshuffling".
* [[Christopher Moore]]'s ''[[The Stupidest Angel (Literature)|The Stupidest Angel]]'' has quite a bit of zombieism. And Brain hunger.
* The [[Newsflesh]] series by Mira Grant (pseudonym of Seanan McGuire), in which bloggers and geeks are the only reason that humanity survived the Rising. Subverts and [[Lampshade|lampshades]] lots of related tropes, while playing others straight (notably [[Raising the Steaks|zombie animals]]: ''any mammal'' over 40 pounds will reanimate upon death).
* Walter Greatshell's ''Xombies'' series deals with an odd combination of Romero and Russo rules; the titular 'xombies' are the result of a contaminant which can only infect dead people (due to the fact that it has to bond to anaerobic hemoglobin, or a blood protein that isn't bound to oxygen). The zombies in this series are especially dangerous because they literally can't be killed. Seperated body parts are sometimes more dangerous than actual zombies. In the second book, it is revealed that {{spoiler|the zombie apocalypse was an attempt by its creator to avoid a far worse apocalypse from a comet/spaceship from Saturn's moon Encaladus}}.
* In [[Aaron Allston]]'s ''[[Galatea in 2 -D]]'', the last attack Roger unleashes on Kevin.
* In the episodic ebook series ''Zombies!'' by Ivan Turner, a [[Genre Savvy]] 17 year old is the first to alert the authorities to the threat, thus subverting the trope because the authorities handle it carefully and sensibly enough that your average citizen doesn't even notice the undead walking among them.
* ''[[Night of the Living Trekkies]]'' is about what happens when the intial outbreak is at a ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' [[Fan Convention|convention]].
* Derek Gunn's [[Vampire Apocalypse the Series]] is pretty obviously an example of this with vampires.
* Peter Clines' [[Ex- Heroes]] is a story about the end of the world at the hands of zombies, only to be opposed by superheroes.
* Deconstructed in ''Handling the Undead'', which [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|explores]] how society would react if dead people actually came back to life, and without the craving for brains that makes it so easy to just [[Kill'Em All]]. (The zombie violence is rare and seems to stem more from their being unaware of their actions and consequences.) The first thing that happens is that the government calls an emergency meeting and decides what terminology to use, deciding on [[Not Using the Z Word|"reliving"]] because it sounds so much more pleasant than "zombies". A memorable subplot follows the [[Tear Jerker|grieving mother of a recently deceased young boy, fighting to hide her mindless zombie child from the authorities]].
* ''Theories of International Politics and Zombies'', a rare non-fiction case of this trope; it's an almost serious look at the subject, through the lenses of various theories of international relations.
* In the [[The Bible (Literature)|Biblical Gospel of Matthew]], when [[Jesus]] is crucified, the dead rise from their graves around Judea.
** Another Biblical example, this one involving a sort of inversion: In the Book of Ezekiel, piles of bones are assembled and fleshed out. They then receive the breath of life from [[God]], and form an army. (They are probably more in the category of [[Technically Living Zombie]] or even [[Back From the Dead]], though.)
* The entire point of [[Can YouYOU Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?]].
* In the 1961 novel ''The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles'' by Robert Moore Williams, mutated protein molecules invade Southern California, turning people into flesh-eating zombies.
* The web-novel ''[[Domina (Literature)|Domina]]'' is about a number of super-powered zombies called "screamers" attacking an island city. Hasn't hit the actual apocalypse stage yet, but the [[Reasonable Authority Figure]] is rightly worried.
* Rot and Ruin takes place about 15 years after an unexplained Zombie apocalypse, and while the zombies are relatively easy to kill (zombie hunters tend to make a game of it) the society is still kind of in shock, so the idea of any organised take-back-the-earth campaign fails to gain traction when it's brought up. Something of an unusual example in that while the main characters do kill Zombies, one of the main points of the book is that just because they're walking around doesn't mean they're not someone's dead relative who [[Due to Thethe Dead|deserves respect]]
* ''[[Diario Dede Un Zombi (Literature)|Diario De Unun Zombi]]'' has this as the setting for a depopulated Barcelona. Add in unstoppable biomechanical horrors and cultists.
* Subverted in ''[[That Is All]]''; the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] is one of the few things that ''doesn't'' occur during [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|the Ragnarok of 2012]]. The only creatures that rise from the dead are taxidermied animals, and they are harmless because they are all mounted on wooden planks.
 
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The Borg of ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' fame are almost Zombies [[In Space]]! One guest star even referred to them as 'cybernetic zombies.'
** They are in fact [[Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie|cyborg pirate zombies]]. In space.
* The two-part serial "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" from the 2005 ''[[Doctor Who]]'' is a neat twist on the [[Zombie Apocalypse]], with {{spoiler|alien medical nanobots encountering a dead human child, assuming that's the human baseline, and rebuilding him and all other humans they encounter as shambling corpses}}. The walking corpses in the earlier episode "The Unquiet Dead" are closer, but {{spoiler|they are actually hosts for the [[Energy Beings|ghost-like aliens]] called the Gelth}}.
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** ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' did a zombie-themed story for the show's pilot episode, "The Invasion of the Bane". In this case, the zombie effect is caused by consuming a new energy drink that turns out to be a symbiotic life form. The resulting zombies try to force others to drink the stuff.
* The UK horror series ''[[Dead Set]]'' involves a zombie apocalypse in Britain, with the plot revolving around the contestants of ''[[Big Brother]]'' as they are trapped in the house.
* An episode of ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise (TV)|Star Trek Enterprise]]'' has the crew coming across a [[Ghost Ship|drifting Vulcan spacecraft]] whose crew have been affected by the [[Aesoptinum|Trellium-D]] they were mining from nearby asteroids. The insanely aggressive Vulcans stagger after the crew through darkened corridors growling incoherently and, while their bite is not contagious, [[Straw Vulcan|T'Pol is affected by the Trellium]] becoming a [[Zombie Infectee|danger to the others]].
* A season three episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' had people being turned into zombies due to a mask that contains the powers of a Nigerian zombie demon. [[Nazi Zombies|Zombies aren't really her thing]].
* ''[[Degrassi the Next Generation]]'' had a Halloween special called ''Degrassi of the Dead'' in which genetically-modified food turns people into zombies, leaving the few surviving students to fight for their lives to escape.
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* Though not a classic example, the dark future of the ''[[Dollhouse]]'' resembles a [[Zombie Apocalypse]]. A signal was sent to all telephones on the planet that would wipe the listeners' minds, and program them to kill anybody who didn't hear the signal. In result rabid hordes of lunatics hunt down the few remaining normal people in the ruins of the civilization; a very strong similarity with this trope.
* ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'' features a recurring sketch about a game show taking place in a world where an unspecified, but clearly horrific and traumatising, "Event" has happened. Food is scarce, there are no more children, there are frequent exhortations to "Remain Indoors" and the survivors live in terror of a mysterious '''Them''', who look like us because they used to ''be'' us. {{spoiler|The latest episode has revealed that '''They''' are sephulchral voiced, red-eyed zombies with a taste for human flesh. Oh. ''And they've got in''.}} It's hinted that this is not the worst part of the "Event".
* The ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' episode "The End" has exactly this. It was more or less a [[Shout-Out]] to ''28 Days Later'' (rage virus infected, very fast Zombies, I mean Croates).
* AMC's [[The Walking Dead (TV series)|TV adaptation of]] ''[[The Walking Dead (Comic Bookcomics)|The Walking Dead]]''.
* The [[Sliders]] had an alternate dimension Earth, where, get this, a {{spoiler|new "fat burning" medicine}} causes a Zombie Apocalypse. The {{spoiler|drug was meant to "eat away" fat}} and an antidote would be taken to end the effect... However something went horribly wrong and millions of people started to hunger for fat, even if that fat was of another human. For some reason these zombies also became very sensitive to light, possibly having something to do with the zombies becoming excessively pale. Also the zombies aren't of the risen dead variety, {{spoiler|but will die without feeding as the medicine - possibly an engineered virus considering it transfers with getting bitten - will simply eat them alive if they don't get fat to their system.}}.
* [[The X-Files]] episode "Millenium" deals with a zombie apocalypse with the advent of [[Y 2 K]]. Obviously, going back and watching this episode over a decade later, it doesn't hold nearly the same punch as it did when it first aired in 1999.
** The Halloween episode of ''[[Community (TV)|Community]]'' deals with a zombie plague breaking out in the college. The group must try to escape, reach the thermostat to lower the temperature, and not be driven insane by the [[Soundtrack Dissonance|"Mama Mia!" soundtrack]].
* National Geographic program, ''[[How to Survive the End of the World (TV)|How to Survive the End of the World]]'', had an episode called '''Zombie Earth''', where an airborne strain of the rabies virus creates this kind of tropes.
 
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* [http://www.rockpapercynic.com/music.html "The Zombie Apocalypse Blues"]
* The music video for the [[Gorillaz]] song "Clint Eastwood" involves zombie gorillas rising from the dead.
* "Early Sunsets Over [[Dawn of the Dead (Filmfilm)|Monroeville]]" by [[My Chemical Romance]].
** "This is a slow one...grab your girl...and then shoot her in the head!"
* The Devil Wears Prada's concept EP "Zombie", as the name implies, centers around one of these. The lyrics and sound clips in between songs (such as the quote at the top of the page) rely heavily on the genre's many clichés.
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* ''March of the Undead'' and ''Reanimator'' by [[Machinae Supremacy]].
* Parodied in LMFAO's music video "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8 Party Rock Anthem]".
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzDmgn-G2FM "Fight 'Em 'Til You Can't"] by [[Anthrax (Music)|Anthrax]]. The cover for the single even depicts [[Rule of Cool|the band themselves fighting off zombies]].
 
 
== New Media ==
* Blogging example: on 13th June 2007, the blogosphere declared a zombie apocalypse. While [http://myelvesaredifferent.blogspot.com/2007/05/blog-like-its-end-of-world-bliteotw.html this page] contains the biggest list of links, it is no means exhaustive.
* The ''[[Red vs. Blue (Machinima)|Red vs. Blue]]'' Public Service Announcement "Planning to Fail" detailed the Zombie Apocalypse survival plans of the main characters
{{quote| '''Grif''': There's two kinds of people in the world Doc. Those who have a plan prepared for when the zombies take over the Earth, and those who don't. We call those last people 'dinner'.}}
* ''[[The Spider Cliff Mysteries]]'': Spider Cliff has the occasional zombie attack, which are all quickly contained offscreen. Except for Annabelle, the intelligent, intact, friendly zombie.
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* Fledgling ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' [[Alternate Universe]] RP [http://z10.invisionfree.com/SOTF_V2/index.php?showtopic=3044 SOTF Zombies] sees a group of ten survivors attempting to fend off the reanimated bodies of their dead classmates to make it to the coastline, where a rescue boat awaits.
* A prominent [[Image Board]]'s Weapons-oriented component routinely sees threads of what would you do during a Zombie Apocalypse. Anything from where would you go, to what weapons and ammo and supplies you carry is brought up. The board is getting fairly sick of it at this point.
* Surprisingly enough, someone managed to make a ''[[Watchmen (Comic Bookcomics)|Watchmen]]'' zombie apocalypse [[Alternate Universe]] fanfic, which you can find [[Watchmen (Comic Bookcomics)/Fanfic Recs|here]], that really kicked ass. {{spoiler|Probably because Rorschach is just about the only character that would wind up happier and saner upon becoming one of the flesh-craving undead.}}
* Several [[SCP Foundation (Wiki)|SCP objects]] could potentially trigger this, especially [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-008 SCP-008], which specifically invokes the trope. Additionally, SCP-093 allows access to a world where something like this has already happened; {{spoiler|though the "zombies" are faceless, legless [[Cosmic Horror|horrors]], produced by a [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]], that have absorbed so many people that by this point they're the size of ''buildings''.}}
* This is implied to be the case in [http://www.ubernorden.com Tales of Ubernorden].
 
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* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' brought on plague zombies during the 13th Black Crusade, courtesy of the god of pestilence and decay, and other zombie infestations have been known to be caused by Tyranids and a fair number of different plants.
** Plague zombies have been part of 40k background for almost as long as the Chaos powers, and are a playable gang in the spinoff skirmish game Necromunda.
* Card Game ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'' has had zombies since the first set, but the plane of Grixis, one of the Shards of Alara, is in a successful [[Zombie Apocalypse]], albeit with necromancers and demons at the forefront, caused by the crapping out of two types of magic good at fighting them off. In any case, humanity is boned on the plane. Note that in ''Magic'', zombies are ''not'' [[The Virus]]; they cannot create more of their own kind through infection, but are instead created from corpses by [[Evil Sorcerer|Evil Sorcerers]].
** [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] by the Archenemy deck [http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/464 Bring About the Undead Apocalypse], which allows you to create a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] of your own.
** The latest Innistrad block takes this [[Up to Eleven|way over eleven]], by introducing a good old fashioned zombie apocalypse, [[Vampire Tropes|vampires]] and [[Big Badass Wolf|werewolves]], [[Mad Scientist|mad scientists]] and their [[Eldritch Abomination|abominations]], demons, and central to the block's story, [[Beyond the Impossible|all of these at once]].
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** The Horde format becomes this when you [http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/sf/166 build the Horde out of zombie cards].
* The board game ''Zombies!!!'', which seems to owe some influence to ''[[Resident Evil]]'' (the players have to shoot the zombies, and they win the game by escaping in a helicopter).
* The ''[[GURPS]] Infinite Worlds'' setting has the Gotha timelines. Those are about twenty known parallel worlds where civilization was wiped out by the "Gotha Plague": a mutant disease that causes infectees to behave like the ''[[Twenty Eight Days Later|28 Days Later]]'' variety. It specifies that the Plague has trouble establishing itself in small communities, so civilization on these worlds is in small enclaves.
** The Gotha Zombies have a few differences from other zombies, though; they're semi-intelligent, and function more like a highly aggressive chimpanzee tribe in terms of organization than anything else. They're quite willing to eat zombies from other "tribes", and will even eat their own if there isn't any other food available.
* In 2008, [[Rifts|Palladium Books]] debuted their own Zombie Apocalypse game: Dead Reign. Featuring a mish-mash of tropes and abilities. (The majority of the Zombies are tough, slow-moving ones, but there are also fast zombies, thinking zombies, zombies that don't believe they're zombies, and "half-dead".)
* The Corpse Factories in the ''[[Feng Shui (Tabletop Game)|Feng Shui]]'' supplement ''Glimpse of the Abyss'' are Buro-created superzombies that are markedly more intelligent than the non-infectious zombies that they create. Only five of these things exist in 2056, and if just one of them gets loose, it's [[Zombie Apocalypse]] time, particularly since the Necromantic Implanter, an arcanowave device that every corpse factory is equipped with, can be used to turn regular zombies into more corpse factories.
* In ''[[Exalted (Tabletop Game)|Exalted]]'', this is one of the favored tactics of the more militarily inclined Deathlords. High level Necromancy can raise corpses en masse, and certain spells can even corrupt an area to the point that the dead will rise of their own accord. Eye and Seven Despairs, one of the Deathlords, has even pioneered a zombie plague that works on its own accord, but is too busy [[Revenge Before Reason|tormenting the reincarnations of people who screwed with him in the First Age]] to actually deploy it.
* ''[[Deadlands]]'' has zombies, but these things are intelligent and cunning. Makes them hard to put down. Particularly if they're intact enough to be ''shooting back''.
* ''[[The World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|The World of Darkness]]'' games actually subvert the zombie apocalypse. While Zombies do exist, they're not exactly common, and aren't normally infectious.
** There was an adventure done by Thomas "Wanderer" Wilde (best known for his [[Resident Evil]] plot guide) that took this trope head-on, called ''The Last Escape''.
** While there isn't necessarily an ''infectious'' means of Zombie Apocalypse, certain ghosts and spirits in the ''[[New World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|New World of Darkness]]'' have a chain of Numina that allow them to jump into a corpse, then jump into any corpse ''that'' corpse kills, then possibly invite some friends along...
* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Game)|Dungeons and Dragons]]'' zombies are simply mindless, reanimated corpses with no risk of infection, and are among the least dangerous of [[The Undead]]. However, there are quite a few undead with the "create spawn" ability, and several of them are ''[[Our Ghosts Are Different|incorporeal.]]''
** The "Infectious Zombie" template was provided in the 4th-edition supplement ''Open Grave''. Unfortunately, actual rules for the zombie plague were not, despite being alluded to in the template.
** In the previous edition, [http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wight.htm wights] are probably the closest thing to more traditional zombies.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* In ''[[Dwarf Fortress (Video Game)|Dwarf Fortress]]'', zombie apocalypses are now completely possible, and are one of the deadliest threats a fortress can face if the ball gets rolling. You see, every creature killed by the undead in Dwarf Fortress will, if not quickly cremated, reanimate and join the undead horde. This can include even the most minute body parts. Once the zombies start racking up a few kills, they quickly becoming a massive ball of flesh that reanimates itself faster than it can be killed.
* ''[[Resident Evil]]'' is generally a subversion of this trope. Only ''2'' and ''3'' deal with anything close to a zombie apocalypse; the rest only involve local outbreaks of [[The Virus]].
** However, the games usually take place which has been almost completely devastated at the regional level, providing a sort of local zombie apocalypse.
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* ''[[Dead Rising]]'' is similar to the above [[Resident Evil]] examples in that the USA<ref>they only place where there are zombies (the Zomberix Dead Rising Sun film is a [[Show Within a Show]])</ref> is kind of tolerating the zombies. Apparently,there are zombies out in the countryside of middle and midwestern America, but being slow and fragile, they are not that big a threat individually. The danger comes in densely populated areas; Willimette in the first game, Las Vegas in between games, and Fortune City in the second game. The rapid speed of the outbreak in Fortune City is explained by the fact that the city was hosting ''Terror is Reality'', an [[American Gladiator]] -style reality TV show about killing zombies enmasse, and someone simply destroyed the gate on the zombie pens, releasing the show's extensive stock into the city. [[Dead Rising 2]] also reveals that there is now a standard procedure for an outbreak.
** ''Saints Row 2'' has a zombie arcade game that strongly resembles ''Dead Rising''.
* ''[[Alliance of Valiant Arms (Video Game)|Alliance of Valiant Arms]]'' has the "Infection" game mode, where random players will become zombies and must then infect the remaining players who are attempting to kill them.
* ''[[Left 4 Dead (Video Game)|Left 4 Dead]]'' is fairly nonchalant with its predicament,(Zoey) can utter the following line; "I can't get over how fast they all are. It's not even fair! I'm calling zombie bullshit on that, you know? They're not allowed to be so fast."
** The Virus in ''[[Left 4 Dead (Video Game)|Left 4 Dead]]'' also seems to be a fairly flexible type. Whilst it turns most people into common cannon fodder zombies, what little backstory exists suggests that it can target certain aspects of infectees to create the Special Infected. Infection is transferred via bite, and can take approximately an hour to set in depending on circumstances. Certain people seem to be 'blessed' with utter immunity (or were just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time; ie, offshore or in the air and nowhere near the spreading infection), making the four heroes not the sole survivors.
*** Thanks to the events of Left 4 Dead 2 and the comic of events taking place after Left 4 Dead 1, it's been discovered anyone who can resist being changed into a zombie are actually carriers; people who carry the virus and can't mutate, but can still spread it to others, effectively making anyone who is an immune survivor spread the virus forever. The military sees these survivors as almost an enemy to humanity and are rounding them up for quarantine so they can try to find a cure, or kill them if they can't find any.
** A fan theory is that copious intake of certain substances can change your inner chemistry enough to react to the infection. The Boomers are severe alcoholics, the Smokers are multiple packs a day chain smokers, The Hunters are meth fiends, The Witches crack-addicts, and the Tanks juicers.
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** There is also a subversion to the rule that the zombies don't fight each other, but it happens so rarely that you may not see it at all at first.
** Two things throw into doubt whether this is a true apocalypse - the military's still in reasonable shape, having the capacity to launch rescue missions and bombing runs, and it's not stated what's going on in the rest of the world.
*** The Military Base portrayed in the Comic seems to show the severity quite heavily. The base appears severely understaffed, with only a handful of soldiers where there should be hundreds. The base is also extremely insecure, with one soldier getting Infected and nearly killing some guards, and a Witch somehow wandering right on in. To make matters worse, it's dangerously low on supplies, and one of the Officer's is leading a mutiny against the base's Commander. The base also appears completely isolated from the rest of the Military (if it's still even around). The Military Base is ultimately destroyed by a massive zombie mob attack, and '''all''' known personnel are KIA. However, due to the Infection's inability to spread over water, the Navy in [[Left 4 Dead 2 (Video Game)|Left 4 Dead 2]] seems to be operating at full capacity.
*** Multiple maps show that almost all the evac centers in the US have been overrun or aren't evacuating anymore. In Crash Course, the New Orleans, Midwest, and Allegheny Forest outposts are still up and running. In Dead Center, only New Orleans and the Midwest are left. The entire United States has been overrun in 2-3 weeks.
**** Of course, by the time you reach New Orleans in The Parish campaign, it seems to be largely overrun and abandoned, too. Bill says "As far as we know, zombies can't swim", so it's possible that islands are still safe, as long as air travel didn't bring The Infection to them.
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** The third game also has a multiplayer mode where someone is "infected" and spreads it by killing people with the energy sword, and they come back to do the same. Eventually, you have a few regular people left heading for the high ground to snipe as much as they can before being overwhelmed. It is very unlikely (though possible with a few skilled players working together) for survivors to last until the end of the round. Infection variants on modified maps make up the ''Living Dead'' weekened event, which plays on random weekends as well as on Halloween.
** Well, the third game was when it was made official and programmed in as a gametype by Bungie. It was played unofficially in custom team slayer games as early as ''Halo 2'', by designating one team a zombie team, and the other a human team. This put everybody on the honor system though, since you had to manually change teams yourself. This, combined with the fact that some hosts went by Russo rules where you have to get killed by a zombie and only by a zombie to turn, while other hosts went by Romero rules where all deaths should make a convert, predictably lead to chaos and frustration when dealing with inexperienced, stubborn, or otherwise plain stupid players.
* ''[[Counter-Strike (Video Game)|Counter-Strike]]'' had an influence on this, where the most favored zombie mode, Infection, has the opposing side as fast-running zombies, and the other as CTs/Ts. Whoever is hit by a zombie is turned into one, and so on. The second popular mode, called Zombie Riot, is a typical zombie apocalypse and is players versus computer-controlled zombies, with no infection.
** According to creators, while playing with the AI for ''Counter-Strike: Condition Zero'', they discovered that playing an outnumbered team of bots with knives only served as a makeshift zombie apocalypse scenario. This led to the creation of ''[[Left 4 Dead (Video Game)|Left 4 Dead]]''.
* The ''Time Splitters'' games are rather fond of zombies, and gives them amusing names like Gilbert Gastric, Daisy Dismay, and Mr. Fleshcage. The third game even had them quote a recurring line from ''Shaun of the Dead'' as a tribute, because ''Time Splitters 2'' had a cameo in the film (as the FPS game that Ed and Shaun play).
* ''[[Blood]]'', a game created around horror movie tropes, had its fair share of zombies (the tougher variety's appearance taken directly from Romero's ''Night of the Living Dead''). In the sequel, living dead were replaced by people taken over by supernatural wormlike parasitic beings.
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* The game ''[[The Sims]] 2'' has zombies (introduced in one of the expansions). A mod on one of the most popular modding sites, [http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php MATY], changes their behavior so that they will fight and infect other characters in the game. The mod, aptly enough, is called Zombie Apocalypse. It should be noted that the zombies without the mod do not do this, and control essentially the exact same as a normal sim, the only except being that they won't die of old age. (Though they do think about brains a lot...)
* ''[[They Hunger]]'', set in a small town and acres of farmland and ruins, appears to use modified Russo rules - the zombies are tough, but they're still killable and don't drop from headshots, BUT they die if they're shot anywhere for long enough. It also includes semi-infected zombies who are smart enough to still use guns, and two of them are bosses.
* The grunt troops of the Scourge in ''[[War CraftWarcraft]] III'' and ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' are all zombies, reanimated by the Lich King or his necromancers. In ''Warcraft III'', most of them are infected by contaminated food supplies rather than being killed by other zombies, although the Lich King is known to raise troops that have died in battle against the undead. Those who are freed from the Lich King's control before they decay too much will regain their sentience, but obviously remain as rotting corpses. In month leading up to the release of the ''Wrath of the Lich King'' expansion, suspicious crates and infected roaches found their way into various ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' cities, giving characters that came into contact with them [[The Virus|the scourge toxin]], turning them into rampaging, virus-spreading ghouls.
** The Scourge forces also expand on the standard reanimation of dead corpses due to there being a number of necromancers deliberately creating more dangerous undead, leading to zombie giants, giant zombie dogs, zombie dragons, and huge constructs made from combining the flesh of women and children.
** Death Knights are subversion in that the one's that joined the Lich King willingly aren't dead at all. All the others are powerful warriors that died at the hands of the Scourge and were immediately resurrected as the Lich King's elite troops. Due to this they haven't had time to adequately decay and usually just have paler skin. Also they retain their memories and personality after being resurrected, though they are still bound to the will of the Lich King.
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* As the title character of [[Stubbs the Zombie]] in ''Rebel Without a Pulse'', you get to play a zombie, bringing terror to the [[Zeerust]] utopia of Punchbowl.
* ''Possession'', which, in addition to being able to lead a variety of zombies (slow, fast, intelligent, mutated, you name it) has the main character as a sentient zombie unleashing chaos on a corporate-controlled city.
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'', a CRPG set in the ''[[Old World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|Old World of Darkness]]'':
** There's a mission called "You Only Die Once a Night" where the Hollywood graveyard caretaker Romero(!) asks you to keep ''hordes'' of mindless zombies from breaking out of the cemetery. Infuriatingly enough, Romero has only given you the job of watching the graveyard ''so he can go out and buy porn!'' Some people neglect any duty they're given, it seems, which is why you're given the option of finding a prostitute for Romero instead of staying behind to cause a zombie apocalypse. Or, if female and with sufficient looks and poise, seducing him instead. The [[G-Rated Sex|title card]] hilariously reads "Romero gets some lovin'." Romero specifically states getting bitten doesn't cause zombies, but it sure does hurt like hell.
** There's also an earlier mission where you have to track down and kill the members of a cult of vampires that deliberately infects their meals with a horrible virus. You have to fight your way through a horde of zombies before you can take the last one on.
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** In ''[[City of Heroes]]'', there's also Dark Astoria, a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] relegated to a single town. It was destined to happen though, considering that there's [[Night of the Living Dead|Romero Heights]] and [[Evil Dead|Raimi Arcade]].
* An [[Clown Car Grave|infinite number]] of zombies usually appears early on in ''[[Castlevania]]'' games. Fortunately they're much easier to kill than the average movie zombie.
* In a similar fashion, countless zombies (and [[Everything Trying to Kill You|other things]]) plague our hero in [[Ghosts N'n Goblins (Video Gameseries)|Ghosts N Goblins]].
* A new game call ''The Last Guy'' features the zombie hero(?) rounding up the various survivors of a zombie apocalypse. From the looks of it, the zombies have devolved (or evolved) into large, dangerous, non-human things, however.
* The PSP game ''[[Infected]]'', as in the quote above, features a massive zombie apocalypse in New York City, played ''Smash TV'' style. The player is Officer Stevens, whose blood is not only immune to [[The Virus]], but actively destroys zombies, who are nigh-invulnerable to everything (it's implied they destroyed a tank battalion, and were able to wield weapons) by causing infected blood to explode. This results in the guys in charge of the quarantine to strap a blood gun to one arm of Stevens, give him/her weapons, and run around NYC, splattering zombies. For the record, the game is hilarious and fun, but short.
* ''[[System Shock]] 2'' had zombies as the first stage of infection by alien parasitic worms, including shambling, strange speech patterns, no vital signs, etc. Oh yeah, and they're still conscious, aware of what they're doing against their will, and ''apologise while they attack you and beg you to kill them''. Later stages were considerably more monstrous, and quite un-zombie like.
** The original [[System Shock]] had early mutants enemies that acted like normal zombies.
* ''Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ''. A grown-up [[Little Red Riding Hood]] vs. zombified versions of classic Fairy Tale characters. [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]].
* In ''[[Elite Beat Agents]]'', one of the missions involves helping a peanut salesman fighting off against giggling zombies that start to attack the town. By sheer luck, the zombies happen to be allergic to peanuts. Huh.
** It was more like that the peanuts tasted so bad that the zombies were returned to normal after ingesting them. Also, they spread the plague via kisses, and the episode's animation during the song segments was done in the style of FPS.
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* Two prominent freeware games from [http://skasoftware.com/ Ska Software], ''[[Survival Crisis Z]]'' and ''Zombie Smashers''.
* The flash game ''[http://www.brainjuicegames.com/games.html Super Energy Apocalypse: Recycled]'' features a zombie apocalypse where zombies grow stronger the more pollution there is.
* ''[[Mad WorldMadWorld]]'' has the [[Monster Mash|Hunter's Castle]], which had its entire foundation shipped from the quaint country of [[Meaningful Name|Zombikistan]], but it also came with it's chief export: ZOMBIES! They're even tougher than the normal version, being able to regenerate until [[Head Shot|somone decapitates them]].
* [[The Virus]] in ''[[Prototype (Videovideo Gamegame)|Prototype]]'' is something like this, only about ten to fifty times worse. For one, unlike most Zombie Apocalypses, it spreads like ''highly contagious'' disease, rather than just happening to already dead people or like something more akin to rabies. Then you get to things like the [[Lightning Bruiser|Hunters]] and [[Combat Tentacles|Hydras.]]
* Discussed and specifically averted in ''[[Tsukihime]]'', though in regards to a Vampire Apocalypse instead. Shiki naturally points out that if there are vampires, and they have to feed so much, then why are there still so few? Arcueid points out that A. vampires don't get along well with each other and fight a lot and B. organizations such as The Church hunting them down, so they keep a low profile and avoiding making too many minions to avoid unwanted attention.
* This seemed to be the original concept behind ''[[Rayman (Video Game)|Raving Rabbids]]'', but they decided to go with party games.
* In [[Fun Orb]]'s ''Zombie Dawn'' game, you play as the [[Evil Overlord]] ''responsible'' for the zombie apocalypse. Unlike most zombie apocalypse stories, these zombies are being controlled by someone - you. Also, the government is actually pretty competent. Anyone attacked by a zombie instantly comes back as one.
* ''[[Plants vs. Zombies (Video Game)|Plants vs. Zombies]]'', you have to fight off a zombie uprising in your own backyard using nothing but aggressive plants.
* In ''[[Zombies Ate My Neighbors]]'' the zombies are fairly weak (they can be killed with squirt guns), and aren't contagious. However it ''is'' possible to temporarily be turned into a zombie by drinking a mystery potion, causing your character to wander around and kill any survivors they touch.
* Zombies are a part of the Necromancer's army throughout most of the ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' series. They also happen to be slow and weak units (compared to most units of the same tier). You can't even make that many of them. It is however possible to make a ''looot'' of [[Dem Bones|skeletons]] in most of the games. In an average sized map it's not too hard to build an army with over a ''thousand'' skeletons, thus creating a ''skeleton'' apocalypse.
* ''[[Metroid]] Fusion'' has a not-quite Zombie Apocalypse in the form of the X-Parasite. Once infected, the victim dies and is consumed, and the X mimics its form and abilities perfectly, eventually asexually dividing into more copies. If killed, it infects the killer or simply regenerates the body. They can even infect corpses to mimic them. One parasite can take over an entire Space Station in ''seconds''. They are truly one of the most dangerous forms of [[The Virus]] in existence, beating out even [[Halo|the Flood]] in apocalypse potential. Easily.
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' has Husks, undead creatures who [[Impaled Withwith Extreme Prejudice|were impaled on spikes]] by the geth, though they usually serve as flunkies for other enemies. However, in ''[[Mass Effect]] 2'', one level on a {{spoiler|dead Reaper ship}} has nothing but Husks onboard, as well as their suicidal cousins Abominations, and Scions which are [[Body Horror|thirty husks smushed together in a single, twisted creature.]] On harder difficulty levels, where the formerly [[Goddamned Bats]] Husks have ''armour'', the whole level has a very [[Survival Horror]] feel to it.
* ''[[Borderlands (Video Game)|Borderlands]]: The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned'' has you trying to clean up one of these with [[More Dakka]]. The Jakobs PA system has even been hacked to refer to it as such.
** It wasn't hacked, that was a joke about prerecorded telephone help lines or something to that effect, they basically fill in the blanks with whatever horrific occurence is happening at that moment in time (which makes the claims of Jakobs being #1 in safety all the more hilarious).
* There's something like this in the ''[[Mount and Blade (Video Game)|Mount and Blade]]'' mod- Solid And Shade, though it isn't an infection. Essentially, the main character is a necromancer and just animates the bodies himself. Though it feels a lot like an infection or apocalypse, since a good way to get corpses is killing them with your zombie army and then reanimating them. It is not uncommon to loose your entire army in a fight, and then get them back with the corpses of your foes. The zombies are semi-intelligent, as they can use weapons, but not sentient. They can be killed by anything that can kill a human, but are much more difficult to kill. They don't appear to require food, although not having food will lower the morale of the party overall (most likely because you still need it) and, due to game mechanics, zombies will abandon you if they have a low morale.
** In a bit of irony, the player starts with a corpse in his inventory to start necromancing faster. According to the backstory, this body belongs to the necromancer he killed to get the book of necromancy in the first place.
*** There's another mod called Chronicles of Talera that features a faction called the Blighted Plague. It's basically a faction of egalitarian Necromancers that brought back the corpses of the dead to overthrow the aristocracy. At first they were good guys, but after discovering tools to capture the souls of their enemies they began a civil war that really doesn't play any role whatsoever in the actual game.
* ''[[Fallout 3]]'' features the [[Goddamned Bats|annoying Feral Ghouls]]. Ghouls are created through massive amounts of radiation, which caused their typical "walking corpse" appearance (and please, [[Fantastic Racism|don't call them zombies]]). Most of them are nice, polite people who just want to be left alone. However, some of them, due to the outstanding radiation poisoning or through brain degeneration, become little more than feral animals, infesting the subway system and the Capital Wasteland. During a mission, you can help a small community of ghouls (intelligent and feral ones alike) by letting them sneak in a tower-fortress, thus unleashing a Zombie Apocalypse on the local residents.
* ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'''s [[Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare|Undead Nightmare]] DLC has this as the main premise -- but like the rest of the game, it's set in the Old West. Yes, it's just as awesome as it sounds.
* PCRPG ''[[Dead State]]'' is set in central Texas during a zombie apocalypse.
* ''[[King's Quest IV]]'' is one of the earliest examples of the trope, which is even more disturbing because it takes place in a fairy tale country of princesses, fairies and magical talking creatures. It is, frankly, terrifying. Fortunately for most young players at the time of it's release, they came late in the game. Due to the general unforgiving hardness of a Roberta Williams title, it was uncommon for any player to get that far without help.
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* In [[Starcraft]] 2, this happens to a group of refugees due to a zerg bioweapon. Raynor's raiders burn out the infested and help the refugees settle in on another planet-- where it promptly happens ''again''.
* One of many possible creations in the Pandemic series, you can create shambling, insane, rotting([[Fate Worse Than Death|though technically still alive]]) infected who spread across the planet.
* [[Call of Duty]] first gave us [[Nazi Zombies]], which was the reason many played World At War. The game mode returned in ''[[Call of Duty: Black Ops (Video Game)|Call of Duty Black Ops]]'' where it got so bad zombies attack the Pentagon, [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|four]] [[A Nightmare Onon Elm Street (Film)|cult]] [[Danny Trejo|monster]] [[The Walking Dead (TV series)|hunters]] had to be called in and at the end, the [[Big Bad]] reveals it's all an [[Evil Plan]] to cause an apocalypse.
* ''[[Dead Space (Franchiseseries)|Dead Space]]'' features the necromorphs, these zombies are not just reanimated humans but 'reshaped' necrotic tissue who don't go don't until you blow of a limb or three. Head shots are useless against them.
* The curse of the Darksign in ''[[Dark Souls]]''. Those born with it are marked as Undead and never permanently die, always coming back, losing a bit of their humanity each time. Eventually, they all lose their minds and become Hollows, highly aggressive, near-mindless beings that attack all others. This, plus the habit of throwing the Undead into the Undead Asylum, has destroyed countless nations.
* Spoofed in ''[[Disgaea 4 a Promise Unforgotten (Video Game)|Disgaea 4 a Promise Unforgotten]]'' with the A-virus, which is slowly turning all of the Netherworld into mindless zombies - {{spoiler|Or rather, they're turning everyone into ''Axel'', but the main characters see little difference.}}
* The mobile game ''Rebuild'' involves a group of survivors building fortifications around a few city blocks and holding off vast zombie hordes. Your goal in the game is to recapture a number of blocks, look for survivors and convince them to join you, produce food and shelter for everyone, keep everyone happy, research technology to help defend against the zombies and cure infections, scavenge for supplies (food, weapons, dogs, binoculars, crowbars, etc.). Once you manage to secure the town, you are given the option of starting over in a new location with 5 people.
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing (Video Game)|Kingdom of Loathing]]'' had the [[The Plague|Gray Plague]], which, as players found out through [[Time Travel]] to [[After the End|Seaside Town, 28 Days Later]], killed the infected population and brought them back as zombies.
* Downloadable PC Game ''[[Zombie Driver]]'' casts the player as an [[Action Survivor|Action]] [[The Taxi|Taxi Driver]] in the midst of an infested city where the outbreak was caused by a chemical explosion. The cabbie must rescue people trapped in various buildings and return them to an extraction point. He gets paid by the mayor for zombies killed and survivors rescued, so he can buy bigger and badder cars and weapons to run down zombies.
* [[X Box]] and [[Play Station 2]] game ''[[Dark WatchDarkwatch]]'' is sometimes subtitled "The Curse of the West", said curse being a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] unleashed on [[The Wild West]] by [[Our Vampires Are Different|a vampire lord]] whom the protagonist, [[Outlaw|an outlaw]] [[The Gunslinger|gunslinger,]] [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can|accidentally set free]] when he thought he was robbing a gold train.
* Though all three [[Diablo]] games featured undead, only [[Diablo III]] features an actual [[Zombie Apocalypse]] casted by the Skeleton King New Tristram after a mysterious meteor crashed into Tristram's cathedrale. Whereas in the previous games the zombies were mere mooks that you would meet and kill, this game features them much like a classic example, with them attacking villages and able to turn people they bit into zombies.
* In ''[[Adventure Quest Worlds]]'', {{spoiler|Vordred creates this in the Doomwood Part 1 finale if the hero chooses to betray Artix and let Vordred become the Champion of Darkness}}.
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== Web Comics ==
* The premise of ''[[All Manner of Bad]]''.
* ''[[Brawl in The Family (Webcomic)|Brawl in Thethe Family]]'''s third Halloween episode started with [[Kirby]] walking towards Dedede, zombified. Soon, the entire cast was zombified. They all moaned 'braaains...' and began closing in on [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Mother Brain from the Metroid series]]. Now there are a bunch of zombies roaming the land, moaning, 'braaaaaiiiinss....' (except Mother Brain, who moaned, 'Meeeee....') {{spoiler|The zombies then found a schoolhouse and studied hard and graduated, achieving the 'brains' they wanted. Then, it turns out the characters where just telling scary stories, and Kirby was the last one to add his part to the story. He apparently tells a disgusting and creepy tale, [[The Un-Reveal|but the comic just skips to when he says, "The End!"]] with a very cute face while the rest of them look [[Nausea Fuel|nauseous.]]}}
* According to the Demononlogy page in ''[[Dan and MabsMab's Furry Adventures]]'', one becomes undead only if they die within 24 hours of receiving a scratch or bite from an undead creature. This implies that the wound itself is not automatically fatal, and that if one died more than 24 hours after receiving it they will stay dead.
* [http://deadmetaphor.comicdish.com Dead Metaphor] is a comedy set in a world plagued by zombie outbreaks. Zombies are very Romero-like in their actions and their desire to consume flesh -- although the human population treats the zombies more as an annoyance than a threat.
* ''[[Dead of Summer]]'' is one of these, as experienced by the city of Baltimore. [[The Protomen (Music)|The Protomen]] have a key role later on.
* Played with in ''[[Dead Winter (Webcomic)|Dead Winter]]''; the city is full of zombies, but they're normally ''not'' a threat until a large number is encountered without an escape route. Other humans are far more dangerous.
* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (Webcomic)|The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'''s titular Dr. McNinja has faced one, of course. [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|Zombie ninjas,]] no less. And zombie Ben Franklin. {{spoiler|1=The zombies are contained thanks to McNinja and the mayor of the town (who is secretly a time-traveling survivor of a future ravaged by this very apocalypse) having set up anti-zombie defences for the city}}. McNinja is convinced the zombies have risen in revenge for him mass-murdering them in the previous storyline (for the greater good, of course). {{spoiler|However, it is revealed the zombies are just a side-effect of a resurrection drug used by the clone of Ben Franklin after he was murdered in the previous storyline. The resurrection itself actually turns out to be part of a larger plan by Dracula.}} It's that kind of comic.
* The [http://halloween2008.dragoneers.com/ 2008 Halloween Cameo Caper] will feature a variety of zombie-types, from a couple of different comics, invading a mall.
* ''Last Blood'' with one hand plays along with this trope and with other hand subverts it. While that world, indeed, had experienced Zombie Apocalypse and majority of zombies are near mindless, hungry creatures, {{spoiler|the First Zombie was, in fact, a vampire, who starved for too long, and completely retained his intelligence after transformation. This is also true for any other vampire-turned-zombie but not for their zombie "children".}}
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* ''[[Something Positive]]'''s "Kawaii of the Damned" storyline is something of an [[Affectionate Parody]] of the [[Zombie Apocalypse]].
* The printed version of ''Van von Hunter'' has zombies that crave brains, but are actually intelligent. After they have tasted some really good brownies made by gnomes, they changed their chants from "braiiins" to "brooownies" instead, and raid gnomes for more brownies.
* In ''[[The Whiteboard (Webcomic)|The Whiteboard]]'', the two weeks to either side of Halloween 2010 featured a zombie uprising that Doc and Roger had to take down. This story arc updated daily, instead of the strip's normal M/W/F schedule.
* Lampshaded in [http://www.xkcd.com/734/ this] ''XKCD'' comic.
* ''[[The Zombie Hunters]]'' [[Reconstructed Trope|reconstructs]] this against the backdrop of a [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|near-future]] [[After the End|Post-Apocolypse]]. It's been a few years since [[The Virus]] nearly [[Depopulation Bomb|wiped out]] the human race and turned Earth into a [[Crapsack World]], where [[Our Zombies Are Different|multiple]] [[Superpowered Mooks|subspecies]] of [[The Undead]] roam freely. The known [[Endangered Species|remnants]] of humanity and [[Government in Exile|government]] have settled on an [[Island Base|Island]] [[Police State|Military Base]], to attempt to [[Find the Cure]] and [[Fighting For Aa Homeland|rebuild society]], which would be fine if it weren't for the tensions between the two [[Fantastic Caste System|castes]], uninfected and Infected. The Infected are a minority population of [[Zombie Infectee]] [[Action Survivor|Action Survivors]] who contracted a dormant form of the virus due to low exposure [[Fighting for Survival|at close proximity]]. [[Typhoid Mary|Highly contagious]], they can infect others through their own bodily fluids, and will inevitably [[Came Back Wrong|reanimate]] after death. Consequently, Infected are both [[Fantastic Ghetto|segregated]] from and forbidden from [[No Sex Allowed|romancing]] the uninfected. They're also [[Dystopian Edict|required]] to wear [[Fantastic Racism|identifying armbands]] and ID tags, [[Big Brother Is Watching|pass through checkpoints]], and [[Fascists' Bed Time|obey curfews]] while among uninfected, and the young and unskilled are [[Fantastic Caste System|exploited]] as [[We Have Reserves|highly-expendable]], underequipped, yet vital [[Disaster Scavengers]]. The story revolves around a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|motley]], [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|dysfunctional crew]] of these [[Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom|so-called]] "Zombie Hunters", living within the margins of their [[Dystopia|Dystopian]] society, and training in an [[Older Sidekick|older]] [[Half-Human Hybrid]] [[Token Heroic Orc]] (who's contempt for his station parallels their own) while trying not to get eaten on the job.
* ''[[Bob and George]]'', in a Halloween special.
* ''[[The Pocalypse]]'' has a [[Zombie Apocalypse]], along with a [[AI Is a Crapshoot|Robot Apocalypse]], a [[When Trees Attack|Plant Apocalypse]]...
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* ''[[Zombie Ranch]]'' takes place over two decades since the dead began to walk. In this case humanity not only managed to survive the disaster -- they have adapted so thoroughly to the reality of the undead that they not only have new laws and customs regarding them, but have managed to turn zombies into a prized consumer commodity.
* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', [http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3523 Tomie insists on ending a book like this.]
* In the [[Urban Rivals]] comic the Nightmare clan raises an army of zombies to attack Clint City, they were beaten when Blaaster goes [[Thriller (Musicsong)|Thriller]] on them and sends them off a cliff to the sea. No really.
 
 
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[The Simpsons]]''' third "[[Halloween Episode|Treehouse of Horror]]" episode has a segment involving Bart getting a book from the "Occult Section" of the school library and attempting to reanimate deceased family cat Snowball I with it; he accidentally reanimates the human graveyard instead.
** In a "Treehouse of Horror XX" segment, a tainted Krusty burger causes a ''[[Twenty Eight Days Later|28 Days Later]]''-style outbreak, which leads to the Simpsons barricading themselves inside their house, where they learn that [[The Chosen One|Bart is immune]]. The zombie hordes burst in, the family escapes, Homer gets bitten but it's hardly much difference, and Bart gets to cure the masses by bathing in their soup.
* Although the entire incident was a prank, in a Halloween episode of ''[[FostersFoster's Home for Imaginary Friends]]'', the "zombies" seem to follow Romero Rules (if you excuse their cry for brains); Mr. Herriman is "killed" and returns as a zombie soon after, a zombie bite turns someone else into a zombie, etc.
* ''[[Mighty Max]]'' had an episode where Max had to travel to Haiti to help his mother investigate the strange behavior of the locals. They had a [[Zombie Gait]] and were pretty strong, however they were possessed by slug-like symbiotes (you could kill the slug to free the victim) and tried to attach more slugs to make more "zombies". Eventually Max finds a hive full of them and kills the Queen slug. The victims were fully aware of what they were doing, a unique trait for these zombies.
* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', out of ''all the possible'' cartoons, also plays with this trope. At the beginning of "Bridle Gossip", Twilight Sparkle and Spike wonder why Ponyville's streets are suddenly deserted and why everypony is locking themselves inside their houses. After pondering some possible answers, Spike decides that some kind of zombie apocalypse is going on.
* There is an episode of ''[[The Smurfs]]'' called "The Purple Smurfs" in which Lazy gets bitten by a "purple fly". This turns him purple, makes him aggressive and causes him to bite other smurfs. The same thing then happens to those smurfs. Check it out for yourself [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1okrh_smurfs-the-purple-smurfs_family here].
** As noted above, this is an adaptation of a storyline from the original Smurf comic book.
* ''[[Sixteen|6teen]]'' had a one-hour special in which zombies raid the mall setting of the series, and the main characters try to avoid being bitten. Of course in the end it's all revealed to be a dream had by Judd from watching too many zombie movies.
* ''[[The Batman (Animation)|The Batman]]'' had a zombie apocalypse in the episode "Strange New World", courtesy of a toxin created by Professor Hugo Strange. It was eventually revealed that {{spoiler|the apocalypse was just an illusion Strange created to trick Batman into releasing the real toxin into Gotham, which Batman figures out at the last moment}}.
* Hilariously subverted in ''[[Invader Zim]]'', where the zombies unleashed by mall cop Slab Rankle in ''FBI Warning of Doom'' prove to be just as stupid as almost everyone else in the show.
{{quote| '''Zim:''' Nothing stops Zim. '''Nothing!''' Not even this filthy army of zombies!}}
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* ''[[South Park]]'':
** A bad case of pink eye was going around. Due to some Worcestershire sauce being used to embalm Kenny, he comes back as a zombie and starts infecting people. The local doctor, when visited by some of the infected, mistakes the condition for pink eye and prescribes some topical cream. Stan, Kyle and Cartman, with the help of Chef (who does a great Thriller bit) attempt to stop the zombie threat.
** Another episode displays some homeless people as zombies in a parody of 2004's ''[[Dawn of the Dead 2004 (Film)|Dawn of the Dead 2004]]''. Though they're more an inconvenience then a threat ([[Too Dumb to Live|doesn't stop the adults from treating it like one though]]).
* ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy]]'' no surprise has a few cases of zombies. One caused by an evil metorite that sucks out people's brains, another caused by the smell of tainted brownies.
* Mad Snail Disease in ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants (Animation)|SpongeBob SquarePants]]'', though it was entirely fake.
* In a season 3 episode of ''[[Transformers]]'', the Decepticons are tricked by the Quintessons into releasing a powerful creature called the Dweller. The Dweller drains the energy of any transformer it can capture, turning them into an "energy vampire". Despite this title, they behave almost exactly like zombies - they move slowly, though not quite shambling, and drain the energy from others to make more energy vampires. They even lose all color, becoming gray and lifeless in appearance.
** In [[Transformers Prime]] the first five episodes concerned the use of Dark Energon, which revived Transformers into a mindless, zombie-like state. They dont spread the virus around, and Dark Energon only affects dead cybertronians, but given that is is AFTER a galactic war, corpses are not exactly in short supply, especially not back home...
*** Amd then there's the fact that [[Big Bad|Megatron]] would have used this zombie army to wipe out humanity. So, a very unique variant of this trope is presented.
* An episode of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' had everyone in Miseryville turn into pickle zombies.
* ''Operation: Z.E.R.O.'', [[The Movie]] of [[Codename: Kids Next Door]] had ultimate evil Grandfather unleash a Senior Citizombie- apocalypse on the world.
* ''[[Super FriendsSuperfriends]]'' had one of the series' scariest stories with "Day of The Plant Creatures" when a meteorite crashes into a swamp and cause a flood of plant creatures who rampage and infect every animal into one of them while the Super Friends race to find a way to stop the disaster.
 
 
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