Current Events > Zombie media that does not call zombies "zombies"

(+) Yeah! (+)

Why? If a zombie outbreak happened today, we would be calling them "zombies". It's actively less believable if you call them anything else.

It's especially funny now that the best words are taken so now they're like "oh shit, some SHUFFELERS are coming"

Zombies are kinda trite as a name as well as generic.

Unless you want to make a generic enemy/unit like in Disgaea, a new name that clicks can be a good thing.

As an example myself, I was looking at noteworthy vampires and vampire lore on Wikipedia for ideas for a female vampire character in the video game idea I'm working on.

With so many vampires in media, I had to go quite crass to make her unique.

And no, I will not devulge the details. I don't want too many of my ideas out their in the wind. I'm only trying to speak from experience.

Doe posted...

It's especially funny now that the best words are taken so now they're like "oh shit, some SHUFFELERS are coming"

I get it for shit where there are multiple different kinds, but if it's all just zombies it's so stupid.

At least the made fun of it in Shaun of the Dead. We don't use the zed word!

Because they exist in a world that never came up with the concept of zombies.

Hayame_Zero posted...

Because they exist in a world that never came up with the concept of zombies.

Honestly, probably this.

Hayame_Zero posted...

Because they exist in a world that never came up with the concept of zombies.

Isnt this established as part of the setting in Walking Dead? Im sure other zombie stories are the same

Hayame_Zero posted...

Because they exist in a world that never came up with the concept of zombies.

This also explains why nobody knows to shoot them in the head. Or how the infection spreads from bites.

AngelsNAirwav3s posted...

Isnt this established as part of the setting in Walking Dead? Im sure other zombie stories are the same

It is, yeah. It's the only way that specific outbreak could be made believable lol. At least with other zombie stories where the virus is airborne, simply knowing what zombies are won't save you from getting infected

It's a weird difference between zombie movies and vampire movies that most zombie movies occur in places where no one has ever heard of zombies and a lot of vampire movies involve people using what they know about vampires

Anteaterking posted...

It's a weird difference between zombie movies and vampire movies that most zombie movies occur in places where no one has ever heard of zombies and a lot of vampire movies involve people using what they know about vampires

Yeah I was just thinking that. A lot of zombie media goes out of their way to differentiate their particular zombie from other zombies and they'll often not even call them zombies. Whereas with vampire media, regardless of how different the vampires are from vampires in other franchises they'll still just call them vampires.

Night of the Living Dead, never called them zombies once in that.

Garioshi posted...

Why? If a zombie outbreak happened today, we would be calling them "zombies". It's actively less believable if you call them anything else.

Traditionally, zombie refers to something different than a number of these other things (and vice versa).

Take a "mummy" for instance (in the horror genre). Is it not just an undead person, like a zombie? How about a reanimated corpse, where its strings are being pulled by some puppet master? Is that not essentially the same thing as a "zombie"? Minus certain characteristics, isn't a vampire similar to a zombie in that it is an undead being that feasts on humans? And if you say "Those are different because such and such," then doesn't that hold true also for these other things being called something different than "zombies" when they have different traits compared to the classical "zombie"?

For instance, The Last of Us' "zombies" aren't truly undead in the first place... They are just infected with cordyceps. They are still alive, just no longer in control of their bodies. While the body still lives, the cordyceps can make it function under its will. Eventually, though, the body can indeed die, which is what we see happen in the game and show for various corpses that weren't killed by an exterior influence.

Yeah most zombie media has to have characters unaware of the concept of a zombie because otherwise the zombies would have been taken care of in less than a week.

DarthAragorn posted...

Yeah most zombie media has to have characters unaware of the concept of a zombie because otherwise the zombies would have been taken care of in less than a week.

This. Unless its a comedy movie.

Senta posted...

This. Unless its a comedy movie.

In something like The Last of Us, it was so rapid, it essentially spread over the entire world in a few days. By time the cause was determined, it was too late.

There's also some that have an understanding of zombie media, but also don't immediately attribute it to that. Think Resident Evil 1 where they think it's just cannibals living in the hills/forest. I mean, if I decided to bite you right now, would you immediately go "Zombie!" and stab me in the brain? Because zombies are something from science fiction/fantasy and not based in reality, most people don't jump to immediately believing certain signs are that.

https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1625869324593364993?s=20

The action sequences deal with survivors fighting the Infected, which most people would call zombies. How did you deal with those battle scenes?

We werent allowed to say the Z word on set. It was like a banned word. They were the Infected. We werent a zombie show. Of course, theres tension building and jump scares but the shows really about our characters; The Infected are an obstacle they have to deal with. For example in Episode Three, Ellie hears an Infected trapped under some rubble. Initially, shes scared, but then you see her grow in confidence, cutting open the Infected and looking at the fibers. Through that interest, you see what the Infected means in Ellies own life. She was born into this world thats completely gone to hell because of this thing and now, maybe she has inside her a solution to this thing. We see Bellas performance as she goes from wonder to hate and you start to think, wow what is this girl capable of? Theres darkness and anger in there. So [even in scenes featuring the Infected], its character first and then just tell the story.

28 Days Later did it first and best by calling them Infected.

Heineken14 posted...

At least the made fun of it in Shaun of the Dead. We don't use the zed word!

I kinda like the notion that "zombie" is considered a slur

The thing is, zombies and the term have been around a lot longer than our pop culture. I mean Jesus was a fucking zombie.

The only way for anyone to not even once use the term "zombie" to refer to what is essentially a zombie could be remotely believable is only if the concept of a zombie never existed in-universe. So any setting that is pretty much identical to ours should be calling them zombies even in passing instead of trying to avoid it entirely.

The idea of "walking corpses" was among the things that European societies used to fear well into the past.

They had many names, but they weren't called zombies back then.

I always thought it was weird that one of the main movies credited for starting the zombie idea, Night of the Living Dead, never actually uses the word zombie.

I remember the World War Z book occasionally used the Zombie word, but most of the time since the narrator was interviewing different people from across the country and globe, there were all types of slang and different ways to refer to the living dead.

DarthAragorn posted...

Yeah most zombie media has to have characters unaware of the concept of a zombie because otherwise the zombies would have been taken care of in less than a week.

This was also addressed in the book where due to the virus starting in China that ended up pulling a total info blackout on any info related to the virus (sounds familiar), it was allowed to proliferate en masse and the US basically took a similar approach where they not only kept mum on it and settled for a handful of special ops teams to "handle" the problem, but also helped peddle a placebo that did fuck all, giving people a false sense of security and allowing the virus to bloom across the globe for an entire year more or less. And then when it is noticed and the military attempts to fight back, most initially use traditional methods like they were fighting an actual war against humans as opposed to unthinking beings that can only be killed by a bullet to the brain.