http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ZombieApocalypse

George A. Romero, director of , director of Night of the Living Dead (1968) "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."

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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 voodoo priest's spell went awry. Maybe an alien space probe broadcast a weird signal at the Earth, or fell to Earth and brought radiation with it. Maybe there's just no more 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.

The Zombie Apocalypse has arrived.

While Horror is assumed to be an inherent part of the zombie apocalypse, not all the horror and conflict comes from the zombies themselves. Instead it can come from the reaction of the living humans involved, and how they respond to the state of fear and violent chaos brought about by the zombies. Often, the answer is "not well". The breakdown of society, the fear that your Fire-Forged Friends could be infected and turned against you without warning, are at least as important to a zombie story as the zombies themselves, if not more so.

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Common to virtually all Zombie Apocalypse tales is that, regardless of the reason zombies attack living/non-infected people, they never attack other zombies. Whether they'll attack animals other than humans varies, but it's rare for The Virus to affect other species, probably because it's cheaper and easier to film humans in make-up than to work with animals, whether trained, animatronic, or CGI.

Due to the threat that zombies pose (they did just become the apocalypse, after all), protagonists of more serious works are required to become very smart very quickly (but will be ignorant with regard to the word "zombie" itself). Failure is often the only option in these stories; rarely do they have an ending that could be considered "happy" by typical standards, or indeed one where humanity survives as a species. Another main staple is that things will always, always go From Bad to Worse. Either from the character's actions or circumstance which are out of their hands, no matter how improbable it is.

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The Militaries Are Useless trope is a must in such a movie to avoid the film ending in five minutes. If they ARE actually competent, they'll just also happen to be evil.

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. The audience may not need to speculate about this, if a Spreading Disaster Map Graphic crops up in the opening credits.

Another common staple of the Zombie Apocalypse is that the zombies are often not the most dangerous enemy that a survivor will face. It's usually other survivors, power-hungry maniacs or regular-hungry people who want to attack you to get at your food and shelter. Expect an aesop about how Humans Are the Real Monsters to be thrown about (after all, a zombie is just a degraded human!)

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 with 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 requiring that everybody be armed. Expect a healthy dose of Improbable Infant Survival — for despite a population of millions of children at any given time in any human population very few will become (visible) zombies — and when they do show up it will just be one child zombie, for audience effect. Also expect the Incongruously Dressed Zombie to turn up for occasional comic relief. Contrast Friendly Zombie, who is not there to make an apocalypse (Attractive Zombies also generally tend to avert this, due to Beauty = Goodness).

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 — even if the undead happen to resemble vampires or yet another kind of monster more than zombies. Vampire versions of this nearly always involve Feral Vampires.

If you are looking for different types of Zombie, see Our Zombies Are Different. Not to be confused with Vampire Apocalypse: The Series by Derek Gunn. Sometimes the 'zombies' might be a case of the Technically Living Zombie, but the overall narrative usually plays out the same way regardless.

A Zombie Apocalypse can be considered a sort of Came Back Wrong on a very large scale.

Also known as a "Zombocalypse".

Examples:

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If Toshiba doesn't make their laptops drop-resistant, the resulting chain of events will cause a zombie outbreak. A marketing campaign has the CEO imagining various worst-case scenarios if some seemingly minor feature isn't added to their product.

Around the time The Walking Dead came out and was a big hit, there was a Fed Ex commercial which showed a horde of zombies attacking a gas station/convenience store. Four survivors were barricaded inside: a Chinese-looking woman scientist (she had on a lab coat) and two men bending over a third. He is lying on the floor, sweating and feverish and about to turn. One of the men is saying to his reluctant friend, "we have to do it, or he'll turn into a zombie and eat us". Just then there's a knock at the back door, and a chipper clean-cut young Fed Ex delivery man shows up with "a package for Dr. Lee". "The antidote" the scientist screams joyously. As the two disconcerted men look on, the Fed Ex employee looks at the man on the floor and asks with casual concern "He okay?"

Anime and Manga

Card Games

Comic Books

Comic Strips

The Far Side: One strip depicts the "Night of the Living Dead Chipmunks".

Fan Works

Films — Animated

Film — Live-Action

Gamebooks

The entire point of Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?.

Literature

Live Action TV

Music

Mythology and Religion

Pinball

Print Media

For their April Fools 2008 issue, The University at Buffalo's Spectrum college newspaper reported, among other things, about the emergence of the Necro-Animatory Syndrome virus, and the rise of the ambulatory dead ("zombie" being an "outdated and offensive term," though Bush is quoted as nearly using it) out of Cape Canaveral, where the NAS virus had apparently come back with a space shuttle crew. Articles included general information, survival guide, how to recognize an NAS sufferer (not very hard), and what to do if you're bitten (die with dignity, and with a friend to take you out immediately).

This fake BBC article claimed that a Zombie Outbreak had occurred in Cambodia and was hushed up by the government. It was debunked on Snopes.com but is still passed around from time to time.

claimed that a Zombie Outbreak had occurred in Cambodia and was hushed up by the government. It was debunked on Snopes.com but is still passed around from time to time. The BBC put out another article , this time playing on the Swine Flu scare (H1Z1, a mutation of the H1N1 virus that reanimated the victim after death, who then showed signs of the usual zombie behaviour). It is of course, fake, but the comments on the page are well worth reading.

Radio Drama

Tabletop Games

Theatre

Rhinoceros is a play by French author Eugene Ionesco that revolves around people spontaneously becoming rhinocerotes. They're destructive, but not violent, and one must apparently choose to become one (or at least not actively choose not to). Though mostly comedic, it still has the feel of a Zombie Apocalypse, not least because there's only one man left standing at the end .

. How The Day Runs Down is a zombified version of Our Town.

The original stage play for Snow White Zombie Apocalypse does this in a fairytale kingdom.

Video Games

Visual Novels

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.

Harvest December has a chapter where this effectively happens as the main god of an island infuses pretty much all of the local girls with his power, causing them to go on a primal rampage without any control of their own selves.

Web Animation

The Red vs. Blue Public Service Announcement "Planning to Fail" details the Zombie Apocalypse survival plans of the main characters 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.

Xombie is a series of animated web shorts, trade paperbacks, and web comics that deals with the war between xombies, zombies, and humans. The schtick is that zombies are your average, run-of-the-mill reanimated dead, whilst xombies are corpses that retain their former intelligence, gain enhanced physical strength, some kind of crazy weapon, and high Animal Empathy. The original shorts revolved around the xombie Dirge and his dog Cerberus protecting a young girl (Zoe), on her way to the last human settlement.

Bowser's Kingdom episode 666 has one of these. Jeff even lampshaded how zombies can't talk: Shy Guy: I'm a zombie now! Ugh!

Jeff: Wait a minute, zombies can't talk.

Shy Guy: Oh, okay! Ugh!

The Frollo Show features one during the "Frollo Beats Up Evil Residents" arc.

FreedomToons: Parodied in "Night of the Living NPCs", where Seamus has to defend his house from a rampaging horde of Non-Player Characters spouting progressive platitudes at him.

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation

Real Life

- Allllll weeee wanna dooo is eat your Braaaaaaiiiins....