101 of the Wildest Pieces of Zombie Lore, Legend and Logic

Zombies entered the Western cultural consciousness in the late 1960s thanks to George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, and our collective obsession with our reanimated cousins has only continued to grow since then. But did you know that Romero’s cult classic doesn’t use the word zombie once?

For more fascinating pieces of zombie trivia and lore from both pop culture and traditional folklore, keep reading…

1) Night of the Living Dead doesn’t use the word zombie. In the script, Romero refers to them as ghouls.

2) It wasn’t until Romero’s 1978 sequel Dawn of the Dead that the word “zombie” was used to describe the creatures, including once on-screen by a character.

3) Zombies don’t speak — except for when they do thanks to human error, like in 28 Days Later, where a zombie child hisses, “I hate you!” right before being killed. Director Danny Boyle later confirmed that this was due to an audio error, and that canonically, zombies in the 28 Days Later universe cannot speak.

4) The modern image of zombies owes a lot to White Zombie, the 1932 movie directed by Victor Halperin and based on William Seabrook’s 1929 novel The Magic Island.

5) There’s a difference between reanimation and resurrection — reanimation means your body is alive, but your mind is gone, whereas resurrection restores a person entirely to their pre-death state of being. This means that Jesus, who died and came back three days later, and Lazarus, who was restored by Jesus four days after his death, are not, in fact, zombies.

6) The word “zombie” probably comes from the Congo, while the imagery we’re familiar with has its roots in Haitian Vodou, the religion created by enslaved people transported to Haiti taking elements from their different West and Central African belief systems.

7) White Zombie not only starred Bela Lugosi, who famously played Count Dracula the year prior, but also used several sets from the film.

8) Many scholars, including author Peter Dendle, have argued that American culture’s obsession with zombies can be directly mapped onto corresponding cultural, political and economic anxieties of American society throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, reflecting everything from anxiety about unfettered capitalism, environmental deterioration, climate change and political conflict.

9) One of the oldest recorded mentions of the undead is in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In it, Ishtar, the goddess of love and fertility, threatens to raise up the dead who will then go on to devour the living.

10) Ancient Europeans used to weigh down bodies with stones and broken pottery to ensure they wouldn’t rise from their graves. Examples of such graves have been found across the Ancient Greek world, as well as in ancient Germany.

11) The jiangshi of Chinese legend have the look of the classic zombie, resembling rotting corpses, despite being known as Chinese hopping vampires.

12) Plus, thanks to Hong Kong filmmakers, jiangshi are typically depicted in popular culture wearing the traditional garments of the Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1636 to 1912.

13) The Haitian concept of zombies as slaves working on plantations even after death reflects the harsh reality of slave labor during the transatlantic slave trade — people were terrified of being deprived of their freedom even in death.

14) The third film in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead series, 1985’s Day of the Dead, features “Bub,” a docile zombie who retains some memories of his pre-zombie life and exhibits human emotions like grief.

15) Frankenstein’s monster is not a zombie, as he’s assembled from the parts of multiple separate people and isn’t one reanimated corpse; many horror fans consider him to be closer to a golem, instead.

16) Being a comedy, Shaun of the Dead contains meta commentary and jokes on the zombie genre, including the fact that the characters are some of the only ones in a zombie film to know what zombies are prior to the outbreak. Shaun, however, refuses to use the “z-word” because he’s in denial about the entire thing.

17) The word “zombie” most likely entered the English language through the writings of 19th century British poet Robert Southey, who used it in his work on the history of Brazil. In his writing, it was a term used to describe the chief of a group of native Brazilians and was said to derive from the Angolan word for “God.”

18) Southey liked the word so much that he named his cat “Zombi.”

19) The fourth highest-selling single of all time features zombies in its music video: Michael Jackson’s 1983 hit “Thriller.”

20) In Haiti in 1962, Clairvius Narcisse died following a short illness. In 1980, a man identifying himself as Clairvus approached Angelina Narcisse, claiming to be her brother who had been conscious but paralyzed during his supposed death and burial, only to be taken from his grave and forced to work on a sugar plantation. 

21) Clairvius eventually died for a second and final time in 1994 after spending the last 14 years of his life confusing scientists and medical professionals alike, although many suspected the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin was responsible.

22) Gamers will recognize Scandinavian draugrs, or reanimated corpses, thanks to the 2011 RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in which draugrs regularly rise from their resting places to attack the player as they make their way through their tombs.

23) Romero loved Shaun of the Dead so much that he gave Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright cameos in his 2005 film Land of the Dead.

24) Vincent Price, whose work in horror films spanning decades was so influential that he became known as the “King of Horror,” served as the narrator for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
 

25) Price had previously starred in 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, a film based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend, the same novel that inspired Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

26) A 1997 article in British medical journal The Lancet examined three cases of zombification in Haiti, including one case of a 30-year-old woman who died and was buried the same day in a tomb next to her house, only to be found wandering the village three years later. Mute and unable to feed herself, her parents accused her husband of zombifying her; she was eventually admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Port-au-Prince and diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia.

27) In philosophy, a “philosophical zombie” or p-zombie is someone who is physically identical to a human being but doesn’t experience consciousness.

28) Rob Zombie was inspired by the 1932 film White Zombie when naming his band, also called White Zombie, as well as when deciding on his stage name. His real name is a much more pedestrian Robert Bartleh Cummings.

29) After wrapping shooting on 2009’s Zombieland and flying back to New York with his daughter, Woody Harrelson was confronted by paparazzi at the airport, prompting him to remark, “I wrapped a movie called Zombieland, in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.”

30) The Guinness World Record for the world’s largest “Thriller” dance was set in August 2009 in Mexico City — a whopping 13,597 people participated in the event held by the Instituto de la Juventud del Gobierno del Distrito Federal.

31) The Zombie cocktail, which contains an astonishing three kinds of rum, was apparently invented by Donn Beach — considered the “founder” of tiki culture — in order to help a hungover customer make it through a business meeting. As the legend goes, the customer returned days later to complain that the concoction had turned him into a zombie for his entire trip.

32) Released in September 1994, “Zombie” by Irish band The Cranberries quickly became, “the most played song ever on alternative radio in the history of America” according to the Los Angeles Times. The song was written by singer Dolores O’Riordan in response to the Warrington bombings that killed two children in Warrington, England.

33) Multiple animals have been zombified in pop culture: Pet Sematary featured an undead cat, as did Re-Animator, while Night of the Creeps, Resident Evil and I Am Legend all featured zombie dogs. Meanwhile, not even farm animals are immune, with Black Sheep starring zombie sheep and Poultrygeist featuring killer zombie chickens.

34) Students at Washington State University held a Zombie Week which was part RPG, part game of tag and part social experiment; the infected were marked by red wristbands, with there initially being one infected person. Dorm rooms were safe, but if you were tagged by an infected person, you became infected too. Weapon and item cards could be used to defend against zombies, and the grand prize was a Visa card for $50 and copies of Left 4 Dead and The Zombie Survival Guide.

35) The sequel to the popular video game Plants vs. Zombies, Plants vs Zombies 2, hit almost 25 million downloads in two weeks, quickly surpassing the lifetime download figures for the original game. 

36) In 2005, Marvel Comics released a limited series titled Marvel Zombies which was set in an alternate universe where all the Marvel heroes had been turned into zombies. The Disney+ show What If….? included an episode centered on the  zombie superheroes, a storyline that will continue in an upcoming animated miniseries.

37) Night of the Living Dead was made for $114,000 and grossed approximately $30 million, earning back over 263 times its budget and becoming one of the highest-grossing independent movies of its time.

38) The Walking Dead is the longest-running zombie TV series of all time, lasting for 11 seasons and spawning six spin-offs, including Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.

39) Zombies receive a mention in Bobby Pickett’s 1962 classic, “The Monster Mash.” He sings, “The zombies were having fun / The party had just begun / The guests included Wolf-Man, Dracula and his son.”

40) English rock band The Zombies formed in 1961, although none of their hits focused on their namesakes. Their most famous hits in the U.S. were “She’s Not There” and “Time of the Season.”

41) American writer Zora Neale Hurston published an ethnography of Haiti titled Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica in which she examines Vodou and the belief in zombies. She concluded that, “if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.”

42) The 2009 parody novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith inspired several other titles, including Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, as well as a sequel, written by Grahame-Smith, a prequel, and a movie starring Lily James.

43) Hindu mythology features the vetala, spirits that haunt charnel grounds, sites where tissue is left to decompose. They tend to possess corpses and harass the living, but also guard villages. Similar to zombies in Haitian Vodou, they’re sought out by sorcerers to be used as slaves.

44) While traditionally, zombies were reanimated by witch doctors or other cruel masters, more and more modern zombie fiction features zombie apocalypses triggered by infections. In The Last of Us, it’s the parasitic cordyceps fungus, in The Walking Dead, it’s the airborne wildfire virus, while in 28 Days Later it’s a “rage virus” that spread after an infected chimpanzee was freed from a lab. Resident Evil, on the other hand, presents the idea of a zombie virus that can change your entire genetic code, which was spread as the result of a lab leak. Perhaps zombie fiction is really about our fear that scientists aren’t good at keeping their labs secure?

45) A “zombie computer” is one that’s connected to a network that’s been compromised by a hacker or virus and can be controlled remotely for malicious purposes, much like an actual zombie.

46) 1936’s Midnight Vampire was the first movie to feature a jiangshi, a Chinese hopping vampire that shares many similarities with zombies.

47) “Thriller” was the first music video inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

48) While White Zombie was the first feature-length zombie film, the first zombie film ever made was a 1919 French silent film called J’Accuse, which featured dead World War I soldiers rising from their graves to march back home.

49) The Resident Evil franchise, which began with the 1996 video game of the same name, has since become the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time, spawning a number of sequels, movies and a TV series.

50) Writing for the Museum of the Moving Image, Kelli Weston argued that early zombie movies were inevitably a tale of race, whether the zombies themselves were Black or not. She writes, “The descriptions of zombies authored by Americans — and later portrayed on screen — frequently paralleled racist language wielded against Black communities: they possess limited intelligence; they do not feel pain the way the living/Europeans did (a myth that persists in medical circles and yields devastating consequences for Black patients).”

51) Dying Light 2 Stay Human is the most-played zombie game on Steam, with players racking up a total of 274,983 hours in-game.

52) The number of zombie movies has increased steadily per decade since the 1920s, with the exception of the 1990s: only 36 zombie movies were made that decade compared to 80 in the 1980s. In the 2010s, a whopping 207 zombie movies were made.

53) The first video game to feature zombies was 1982’s Entombed released on the Atari 2600. In the game, players had to make their way through an endless, vertically-scrolling maze of zombies.

54) In Greco-Roman mythology, the undead were considered the perfect vessels to deliver prophecies; several myths feature characters digging up dead bodies in order to ask them questions about the future, including in Lucan’s historical poem Pharsalia.

55) Both J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin were inspired by European folklore to include the undead in their novels. The Lord of the Rings features the barrow-wights, who are less corporeal than zombies, while A Song of Ice and Fire features wights, corpses that have been resurrected via necromancy. 

56) Italian director Lucio Fulci released an unauthorized sequel to Dawn of the Dead in 1979, titled Zombi 2; it was called that because Dawn of the Dead’s title in Italian was simply Zombi.

57) One hundred and forty-one zombie-themed video games have been released since 1982, with the 2010s seeing the most at 59 released that decade, including The Last of Us.

58) The Last of Us was later adapted for television by HBO, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. A sequel to the game, The Last of Us Part II, was released in 2020.

59) In The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folktales, the adventurer Sinbad encounters a ghoul king of the Magians, a people whose minds are described as having been “stupefied,” causing their state to become changed. If that weren’t zombie-like enough, they also eat raw human flesh.

60) Potential locations floated by members of r/Zombies that would be perfect for riding out a zombie apocalypse include Sigiriya or Lion’s Rock in Sri Lanka, an ancient rock fortress 1,145 feet high, Vischering Castle in Germany, which comes complete with an outer defensive courtyard, moat and drawbridge, and the Salt Lick Safari Lodges in Kenya.

61) The Ancient Greek word maschalismos refers to the practice of rendering the dead incapable of rising and haunting the living by removing their internal organs.

62) While mummies and zombies share some similarities — both were once dead, and now are not, both move slowly, both are creepy as hell — mummies are always the result of magical reanimation, and are typically motivated by a particular purpose such as revenge, whereas zombies are typically motivated by a desire for tasty flesh.

63) In medieval literature like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, characters engage in a “beheading game” in which a stranger challenges the hero to an exchange of blows, encouraging the hero to behead him, only to then reveal his supernatural nature when he retrieves his severed head from where it has fallen. Far from being beheaded in return, the hero is then given only a minor injury — a reward for his valor.

64) Potential scientific explanations for alleged cases of zombification include the use of tetrodotoxin, an often fatal neurotoxin found in puffer fish that causes muscle paralysis and respiratory arrest.

65) One subgenre of zombie movies is Nazi zombie films. Over 25 have been made since 1941, including the early examples of King of the Zombies and Revenge of the Zombies in 1941 and 1943 respectively, as well as 1963’s amazingly titled They Saved Hitler’s Brain.

66) Sharing similarities with the zombie iconography that emerged in Haiti, several cultures in South Africa feature stories about the xidachane or maduxwane, zombie-like creatures that can be created by witches looking for slaves or by small children, who, as everyone knows, are basically witches in cuter disguises.

67) Scopolamine has been described as “the most dangerous drug in the world” and is believed by many to send people into a “zombie-like” state. Far from removing your free will it has amnesiac effects and makes you drowsy, much like too much alcohol on a night out.

68) In Brazilian folklore, Corpo Seco is a dead man who was cursed to wander the earth after being rejected from both heaven and hell, terrifying everyone he comes across as a result of his appearance: that of a dried-out corpse.

69) Werewolves and zombies famously crossed paths in 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. After friends Jack and David are attacked by a werewolf and Jack dies, he returns to inform David that he is now a zombie doomed to roam the earth until the werewolf’s bloodline is ended, urging David to kill himself since he was also bitten.

70) 1984’s Zombie Zombie is considered by many to be the first video game focused entirely on zombies, although 1984 also saw the release of an Evil Dead game based on the film of the same name.

71) Author Max Brooks, son of comedy legend Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft, has written two best-selling books about zombies: The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, the latter of which was adapted for the screen in 2013.

72) The Zombie Survival Guide serves as a fictional survival manual for making it through the zombie apocalypse in one piece, whereas World War Z is a novel potentially set in the same universe about the events of the zombie apocalypse.

73) Max’s father Mel wrote and directed Young Frankenstein in 1974 starring Gene Wilder. While it doesn’t feature zombies, it does feature a reanimated corpse, so you could say the reanimated dead are part of the Brooks family business.

74) In the summer of 2016, a synthetic drug 85 times more potent than marijuana caused a “zombie outbreak” in New York, with 33 people reporting “zombielike” behavior and seeking medical attention.

75) One of the few zombie movies shot in Haiti is 1935’s Ouanga, written and directed by American George Terwilliger. Racist stereotypes about Haitians are cranked up to eleven in this movie, with anxiety over miscegenation driving much of the plot, which features a mixed plantation owner raising 13 Black men from the dead to kill a white rival for her love interest’s affections.

76) In a discussion about which countries would suffer the most during a zombie outbreak, the top responses were Japan (densely populated, dependent on public transportation), the United States (half of the population would simply deny it was happening) and India and China (both densely populated countries where citizens generally don’t own weapons).

77) On the flip side, countries best placed to survive a zombie apocalypse include Australia and New Zealand thanks to their location at the ass-end of the world, the fact they’re islands and the heat; Russia, with its cold temperatures and large amounts of empty land; and any other island nation that isn’t overly densely populated and can shut its borders early on.

78) Zombie walks originated in the early aughts and many cities around the world continue to hold them annually. The first such event on record was at GenCon 2000 in Milwaukee, where participants organized a flash mob of zombies to make fun of vampire LARPers who were disrupting their games. Many zombie walks are now done for a good cause, like the Zombie Walks around Australia designed to raise money for the Brain Foundation.

79) The Disney Channel Original Movie Zombies, released in 2018, is a rare musical entry in the zombie genre, eventually leading to the release of two more movies in 2020 and 2022.

80) Students in Zombies attend the fictional Seabrook High, which is potentially a reference to William Seabrook, the author of The Magic Island, the novel White Zombie was based on.

81) Developers have created a prototype of a video game where you can experience a zombie apocalypse from the perspective of an adorable tiny puppy. Think Stray, but with more undead corpses.

82) While the majority of zombie media depicts zombies as limping and slow-moving, several feature fast zombies, including the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, Zombieland and 28 Days Later.

83) In folklore from around the world, many undead or restless dead are people who have died prematurely and thus will never be at peace. For instance, in Scandinavian folklore, gjengangers are the reanimated corpses of those who have taken their own lives, been murdered or are murderers themselves.

84) Harry Belafonte’s 1962 calypso classic “Zombie Jamboree” tells the tale of zombies throwing a bacchanal in a New York cemetery. It features a female zombie who jumped out of her grave “in one hand a quarter rum / in the other hand she knocking Congo drum” and a bystander who said it was “a pleasure to see the / zombies break away.”

85) 2013’s Warm Bodies, based on the 2010 novel of the same name, is a zombified retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In it, “Romeo” (or R as he’s known) can only communicate in grunts, moans and almost-words until he meets Julie, at which point his heart resumes beating and he’s able to use more words. 

86) The highest-grossing zombie movie of all time is 2013’s World War Z starring Brad Pitt, which made $540.5 million at the box office.

87) The second highest-grossing zombie movie of all time is the children’s animated comedy Hotel Transylvania, which made $358.4 million and launched an entire franchise featuring four feature films, three short films, a television series and several video games.

88) According to one highly scientific chart, the most dangerous zombies can be found in 28 Days Later, because they’re both reasonably intelligent and quick. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the zombies in Shaun of the Dead, who are both incredibly stupid and incredibly slow. 

89) Zombie lovers seem to agree that zombification via infection, like in The Last of Us, is the most likely scenario if a zombie apocalypse were to happen in the real world. As one commenter noted, “Learn about rabies. Rabies will make you think zombies are actually possible.”

90) World Zombie Day, held annually in October, started in 2006 at Pittsburgh’s Monroeville Mall, the filming location for Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

91) One early concept title for Plants vs. Zombies was Lawn of the Dead, which was later used as the subtitle for the third installment in the franchise.

92) Consistently across almost all zombie media, zombies have just one weak spot: the head. If you can incapacitate the head or remove it entirely from the body, you’re good to go.

93) There’s no one official collective noun for zombies. They have alternatively been called mobs, packs, swarms, gangs, hordes, drags, plagues or appetites.

94) Unlike many zombie movies, 28 Days Later has a somewhat upbeat ending: The survivors are waiting out the zombies, who are dying of starvation, in a remote cottage in Cumbria.

95) The DVD extras feature three alternative endings, however, one of which was included as part of the U.S. release after the film’s credits in response to online discussion over whether the official ending was too upbeat.

96) “Kinemortophobia” is the fear of zombies. “Kine” comes from the Greek verb “to move,” “mort” is the Latin word for “dead” and “phobia” comes from the Greek word for fear, so it literally means a fear of the moving dead.

97) Malls are a popular location for zombie stories. Both versions of Dawn of the Dead feature malls, and Dead Rising follows photojournalist Frank West after he’s trapped in a Colorado mall alongside a horde of zombies. The Last of Us: Left Behind, an expansion pack for the original game, also takes place in an abandoned mall, this time in Boston.

98) The word “zombie” has never been used in an episode of The Walking Dead. As one of the show’s stars explained, Romero’s movies, and thus popular depictions of zombies, don’t exist in their universe.

99) Instead, zombies in the show are called biters, lurkers, geeks and walkers.

100) The Japanese film One Cut of the Dead is the highest-rated zombie movie on Rotten Tomatoes, followed closely by The Night of the Living Dead and Train to Busan.

101) In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a 36-page graphic novel titled Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic designed to educate people about the importance of emergency preparedness.