Zombie Cliche Lookout: Post Action Recap
After a big action scene, our heroes usually need to get out of tunnel vision mode and figure out what else has been happening while they’ve been giving the bad guys (or zombies, whatever) great heaping quantities of what-for. Generally speaking, they often choose to do this right in the middle of the battlefield (or wherever the action just occurred), often when there are still plenty of dangers lurking out.
You see this trope pretty often in war movies, especially those that have a single central hero. Braveheart is the examples that springs to mind for me. William Wallace seems to be constantly taking a break from the fighting, even as the battle is still going on in the background (although the fiercest fighting has indeed ended).
About this Episode:
The leader of the escaped convicts has now zombified in the background, and we can’t see the prisoner that Barb initially shot, nor do we know what Barb looks so concerned about beyond the forth wall. But if I was a betting man, I’d be betting a lot on zombies.
I mean, this is a zombie comic, isn’t it? It just makes sense that there would be zombies.
Discussion Question: Zombie Animals
This one has come up more than once in the comments: do you like it when animals can turn into zombies too, or do you prefer when it only affects humans. And, if it does affect animals as well, should it only zombifiy certain types of animals? For instance, should only animals that are fairly closely related to humans (like chimpanzees) be able to turn into zombies?
I tend to not like zombie animals. I like it better when zombies are only humans. It keeps things simpler, and I like the sameness of only one “kind” of zombie, so to speak. I think when you introduce animals zombies, you’re getting into “special” zombie territory, like a video game.
zombie animials are harder to hit because they are low to the ground
and they are a nussiance to a person with good aim
What about a zombie Ostrich. They’d be high off the ground.
The head would be really hard to hit on a zombie ostrich.
Killing a zombie ostrich wouldnt be that hard. Im a huge sword person and i do practice alot. i also sharpen my weapons and with there neck being as long as it is it shouldnt be a hard target.
I’m loving the in depth zombie ostrich discussion we’ve got going on here.
in the last stand series there a lot of zombie dogs
That’s a Flash game right? I remember playing that one.
I was just thinking AWESOME now the group has tons of weapons to choose from to continue on in there ultimate zombie quest. So for the discussion question I believe that if animals can get infected it would end humanity in days, because infected insects, lizards, fish birds, and small mammals would be able to infect every survivor that wasn’t infected by the humanoid zombies already. Just look at how fast they spread plagues in the past!
Exactly! That’s my opinion too… Well said!
Just echoing here, but you’re absolutely right. You’d have to have some sort of limit, or we’d die out thanks to mosquitoes.
I agree, its too much. It would have to be restricted to meat eating animals, or maybe just mammals. But even then Im not sure humanity would have any kind of chance.
Even restricted to mammals, I think we’d be screwed. There’s a lot of dogs and cats out there to get us infected.
This is the exact logic I was going to use. Human zombies make more “sense” for storytelling.
That’s a very important perspective as far as I’m concerned.
Uh oh I just noticed the 2 zeds preparing to attack are unsuspecting heroes :O
At least two.
I like how Resident Evil (the games, not the God-awful movies) approached the idea of infected animals, that the infection affects each species differently. Some animals get stronger, some smarter, some more aggressive, some just plain bigger and uglier while others exhibit extra-sensory abilities like hiveminds and such. But, that probably has to do more with the fact that the Resi virus was created to do specifically that; turn normal animals into deadly bioweapons. According to the S.D. Perry books, the T-Virus was never meant to be used on humans, which is why human carriers aren’t very effective bioweapons where damn near everything else becomes super-deadly.
Having said all that, it’s exceedingly rare for a naturally-occurring virus to infect multiple species, and rarer still for cross-species viruses to affect the various, disparate species the same way. For zombie animals to work, you’d need a damn good reason for it to do that, such as being engineered for that express purpose as with Resi and the 28 Days/Weeks Later series or even Zombieland where the zombie virus apparently mutated from mad cow disease (though Zombieland never says if they have zombie animals, I assume there are at least zombie cows).
So yea, basically, if the writer can come up with a decently logical reason why the zombie virus makes zombie animals, I’m game, but it had better be a really good explanation.
I like that as a game play element, because it keeps things interesting, but not so much from a story perspective.
Kill Zombies Kill!!
As far as your animal Question: It varies on the film and type of Zombie. Now I do agree with you animals tend to fall in the campy category. Although it would be more reasonable when it comes to an outbreak. Beacause lets get real here, slow zombies alone would only take a week or so to retain. Now where would the line be drawn animals insects, plants?? Now I like the all mammals idea that could pay off.. .. for the undead.
Ooh, zombie plants. There’s something I hadn’t thought of.
there are plenty of carnivorous plants, they could get the ability to walk!
So instead of worrying about my kids eating their vegetables I need to worry about ……………I just cant say it….it too cheesy.
I laughed. Out loud.
I think it would make sense that animals would infected if it a biological kind of thing. The best way I’ve seen this covered was so that animals over a certain size can be infected. I think it was anything over a large dog.
That’s not a bad way of doing it, actually.
animials would probably be the first to get infected ,carry the virus and spreading it via meat and dairy products
I’ve seen that disease vector a time or two.
More zombies! Though I think Clark sees them.
As to zombie animals, I’ll agree further up with Mason, zombie insects would end the entire planet. They’re everywhere.
But, if you’ve got zombie animals… it all depends on the agent/virus/vector/ect that causes zombies and who and what all it effects.
When treated as a disease, I like those movies and books where they treat it similar that the disease may only cross jump to a few other species or not at all.
That approach makes the most sense to me too. I think that’s how real diseases work anyway.
Before I read anything, I’d like to say that the worried face on Barb feels a bit out of place after that awesome piece of awesomness from the last episode.
Don’t worry, badass Barb isn’t gone.
In the spirit of mad cows disease (which humans created after creating zombie fiction) I’d say that animals should be able to get infected if they themselves eat zombie flesh. Obviously would the insects get it? No since mosquitoes don’t get malaria. Could they carry it? No because they can’t carry mad cows…so we think however there’s reports that the deer population in Rockies have a version of mad cows potentially carried by ticks?? Would zombie humans be prone to bite animals or zombie animals bite humans. For the sake of simplicity I’d say no it’s a self destruct kind of thing so the zombie cow would go after the zombie cow etc.
So in essence only if a predator eats zombie flesh would it get infected (or inadvertently eat it eg humans feed zombie infected flesh to a herbivore). Once a zombie it’d only go after its own species.
Mutiple story lines of the world of animals going into horrible cycles as a lion bites a human, gets infected then attacks it’s pride who get infected and now we only have zombie lions hunting zombie lions. Same with zombie livestock. Problem is if we eat livestock that is infected but hasn’t turned we too have ingested the disease ….. no more feeding pigs left over carcasses I’d say
Excellent thoughts here, Mandy.
I’m curious what you mean by humans inventing Mad Car after zombie fiction. Can you expand on that a bit?
That is a very long fight scene. It lasted several episodes! 😛
I’ve been looking at the way things are going in the world, particularly in the UK, and I have reason to believe that the world is going downhill.
I think that by the year 2023, everyone will be using solar power, a with some chickens and maybe a goat in the back garden. We will be growing our vegetables and fishing on weekends. People will be trading for things like chocolate and oranges.
If the world really comes across a big problem, I think I will do what Clark did and survive in the great outdoors. I like that guy now, and I’ve since forgotten what he called Cherl that one time.
I do recall a kids movie from a few years ago about a famil of vampires living in Scotland. they started living off cows, which in turn resulted in vampire cows :0 As I remember it was kind of funny.
On a more serious note, I liked how Max Brooks explained that only humans were infected. The virus needed a certain amount of brain matter to reach ‘critical mass’ as it were.
I wonder how badly damaged their van is? It looked like they were mainly shooting out the back, that shouldn’t effect their using it to get away. Even if they hit the engine compartment, engines are big solid blocks of metal; you need something a bit bigger than 9mm to seriously damage them.
Of course, even if the van is disabled, they could still use the prisoners moving truck. I would guess they stopped here for a reason though – probably out of fuel. Still, fill it up (maybe from the news van) and they should be good to go.