Zombie

Zombies are deceased humans reanimated by Element 115 and are the primary antagonists of the game mode of the same name.

Creation
Though the origin of the zombies remains mostly unclear, various incidents leading up to the creation of the zombies can be found via radio messages found in various maps. It would appear that Element 115, an element found in meteors and known to power Wonder Weapons, can reanimate dead cells. A meteor containing 115 is shown in the map Shi No Numa outside one of the swamp areas. Meteor fragments can be seen on Kino der Toten, Call of the Dead, and Shangri-La. Meteors can also be seen on the moon whenever it is visible.

While working with Element 115 to power new weapons and the teleporters, Dr. Ludvig Maxis, a Nazi scientist, discovered it could also reanimate dead cells and created an undead army. Unfortunately, this army couldn't be controlled as the zombies would always go berserk when tested. Edward Richtofen, Maxis' assistant, believed Maxis wasn't acting quick enough and decided to betray him to further the research.

One day, Maxis used his daughter Samantha's dog, Fluffy (who was pregnant), as a test subject for his teleporter. Unfortunately, something went horribly wrong and Fluffy transformed into the first Hellhound. After this event his assistant, Richtofen set his plan into motion when he locked Maxis and Samantha in the teleporter room with the mutated Fluffy.

Hellhounds are dogs that appear in both Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops, both as a special type of enemy separate from normal zombies. They are a vicious and murderous type of enemy that appears on Shi No Numa and Der Riese on World at War as well as appearing on Black Ops in Kino der Toten, Dead Ops Arcade, and Moon. A rumble of thunder and an ominous guitar note will be heard at the start of a Hellhound round, as well as the Demonic Announcer saying "Fetch me their souls!" (at the start of the round on Black Ops, and after the first Hellhound spawns on World at War). On these rounds, the arena becomes foggy. They are the puppies of Fluffy, Samantha's pet dog who Richtofen and Maxis turned into the "Original Hellhound". They possess the ability to teleport (but only use it to appear on the map), and they appear with a bolt of lightning marking where they spawned at. The ground rumbles when a Hellhound has spawned nearby. They are weaker in terms of attack power and health than normal zombies, but are also much faster and may spawn anywhere on the map, rather than fixed positions. After round 16 on Der Riese, Hellhounds spawn at the same time but also still get separate rounds where they appear alone. When the last Hellhound of the round is killed, it will drop a Max Ammo. When a Hellround ends on Der Riese and Kino der Toten, "Beauty of Annihilation" is heard. The same goes for Pentagon Thief rounds on "Five" and Space Monkey rounds on Ascension.

"Five" and Kino der Toten, both from Call of Duty: Black Ops, feature a new kind of zombie called the Crawler Zombie. The Crawler Zombie is a zombie that crawls on all fours (hands and feet). It emits an "aura" of Nova Gas upon death, unless it is killed by a Ray Gun, Thundergun, explosives or knife. Apparently, the Crawler Zombies were a failed experiment by Ludwig Maxis, according to Dr. Edward Richtofen.

Ascension features its own all-new, exclusive "special round" enemy, the Space Monkeys. Space Monkeys are monkeys from the Soviet Union's Space Program that came into contact with Element 115 when they were sent to the moon. In-game, they appear in the same manner as the Hellhounds that they replaced, there is a misconception that in order for them to be able to appear, the player(s) would have to have the power turned on, and that one player has to have a perk. When a Space Monkey round begins, the map turns into a yellowish-color for a moment, then the map turns dark-orange, with an alarm buzzer being heard, and the cosmodrome's announcer saying "Warning, thief entry detected. All security personnel on high alert." Space Monkeys will appear and try to steal the player's perks by jumping onto and attacking the Perk-a-Cola machines. If the player is too close to a monkey, it will jump, and upon landing, releasing gas that impairs vision and movement. They can also damage the player directly. If they are all killed before they can even touch a perk machine, they will drop a Max Ammo and the Random Perk Bottle, which gives the player a free perk.

In Call of the Dead, George A. Romero appears as a "special guest" boss zombie that follows the players around. He will continually follow players until he is killed. He is very difficult to kill due to his extremely high health, and when he is shot (or he hits a player) he will go into a "berserk" state and sprint after players when he is hit, although the water areas can be used to calm him down by running into them. Insta-Kill and the Nuke are completely useless against him, and he will simply laugh when hit by a Nuke. He can also emit a special yell that causes all zombies in the vicinity to go into a very fast sprint, a feature not seen since Verrückt. Nearby zombies can absorb the electricity emitted from the stage light that he carries around as a weapon, and use it to stun the player upon contact. When he dies, he will drop the Death Machine and the Random Perk Bottle. If the player that killed him has performed the Original Characters Trapped easter egg, he will instead drop the Lightning Bolt, which when grabbed, is actually the Wunderwaffe DG-2. However, he is not permanently dead, and he spawns again after two rounds (including the round when he was killed).

In the zombie map, Shangri-La, zombies are citizens, female zombies also appear for the first time. Zombie Monkeys appear for the first time and enter the map when a power-up appears. They then take the power-up and randomize it on their back. They must be killed before they leave the map or the player will lose the power-up. If the player takes the power-up when the monkey is going for it, the monkey will chase and hit him before leaving. Two other zombie types also appear in Shangri-La: the Napalm Zombie and the Shrieker Zombie. The Napalm Zombie walks extremely slow and will kill zombies in his path to reach the player. When he reaches a player or is killed, he explodes and leaves a patch of Napalm where he was. Shrieker Zombies run extremely fast and will try to blind the player when they reach them. If they're killed while screeching, all of the surrounding zombies will be killed along with it.

In Moon, the Crawler Zombies have further mutated into Phasing Zombies, which are able to teleport short distances at fast speeds. Astronaut Zombies also appear and can sustain heavy damage. When they reach a player, they will teleport him/her and steal a random perk from them. When killed, they explode and push the players backwards.

In TranZit, the Zombies have now gotten more numerous and now have blue eyes due to Richtofen's control.

Special Zombies
While zombies exhibit a variety of features and behaviors depending on their location, some formerly-human undead prove to be an almost entirely different monster. There are even some that weren't human to begin with.

The zombie variants include:
 * Hellhound
 * Crawler/Phasing Zombies
 * Pentagon Thief
 * Space Monkeys
 * George A. Romero
 * Napalm Zombie
 * Shrieker Zombie
 * Zombie Monkey
 * Astronaut Zombie
 * Avogadro
 * Denizen

Speed
The Zombies have varying speeds and movements, and some are exclusive to certain maps. These speeds are:


 * A slow stumble with arms by their sides.
 * In Shi No Numa, zombies might stumble around in a sort of sideways manner with arms by their sides and with their shoulder tilted towards the player.
 * The Nazi zombies on Verrückt, Der Riese and Kino der Toten may occasionally Goose Step march when walking up to a barricade.
 * A normal walk with their arms waving in the air and their faces glancing upward at the sky.
 * A jog with arms straight out, like a stereotypical Zombie.
 * A fast run. Their arms move back and forth, similar to a human.
 * A sprint, with one arm in front of them pointing down and the other behind them in the air.
 * In Verrückt, Call of the Dead, and Moon some zombies have a human sprint-like speed with their shoulders forward and arms moving as a person would while running (although to less of an extent). These are considerably faster than any other speed, and run at roughly the same speed that the player does with a high-mobility weapon (without sprinting). The sprinting zombies on Call of the Dead are running more human-like than sprinting zombies from Verrückt. Any gun class other than a high-mobility weapon will require the player to sprint in order to not get caught by them. In Call of the Dead, zombies are brought to this speed by a special yell from George A. Romero, but in Verrückt, they will merely spawn sprinting. In Moon, however, they will begin to sprint after the player once they are launched by the Gravity Lifts. This also causes crawlers to quickly scramble towards the player on its hands and knees (even when both legs are missing).
 * In Ascension, zombies sometimes crouch down and perform a roll towards the player, or maybe even sidestep to avoid getting hit. When they sidestep they appear to lose their balance and slow down to a slow walk before they finish sidestepping.
 * In Moon, when outside on the surface, zombies float around a lot due to the gravity.
 * In TranZit, Zombies that are chasing the bus will sprint extremely quickly, faster than in any previous map.

Behavior
Zombies will only attack a player through melee attacks; they do not use weapons. Zombies can be gibbed, but will continue to attack the player even after having lost half of their limbs. Note: in-game, it is impossible to destroy a zombies's legs so that it will be forced to crawl if it is already missing an arm. Zombies will not continue to attack players who have been downed, instead continuing onwards to the next player as if the one who has been downed is not there.

Zombies typically chase after the closest player, and can be distracted by either approaching or attacking them. Alternatively, a Monkey Bomb or a human who has been "turned" by the V-R11 will serve to divert their attention for a short time. Also, the Awful Lawton acts as a distraction weapon.

In both Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops, zombies retain some vestiges of human behavior and intelligence. They are capable of limited speech, including shouting the words "Sam" when attacking the player, or "Monkey" when presented with a Monkey Bomb. Also, the Nazi Zombies sometimes appear to march, and the Russian Zombies from Ascension will sometimes roll or sidestep to avoid being shot, a Spetsnaz battle maneuver.

Health
The health of zombies increases with every round. Zombies start with 150 health on Round 1, and gain 100 health every round until round 10. Upon reaching round 10, their health is given a 1.1x multiplier every round.

Damage Multipliers
With any weapon, damage is applied to zombies. A head/neck attack will multiply weapon damage x2, a chest/torso attack will multiply weapon damage x1.5, and a limb/groin attack will multiply weapon damage x1.

Trivia

 * In the Wii version of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the zombies' voices are higher pitched.
 * In Call of Duty: World at War, if a Grenade is thrown at a zombie about to come out of the ground, it will go into a crouching stance.
 * Technically, zombies are not unarmed. They are equipped with the weapon "BRAAAINS..." available through console commands. This, however, is only a Melee weapon, and if the zombies didn't have it, their attack would look like the standard melee attack for humans, without the knife in the hand.
 * When in Shi No Numa's water, zombies lose very little of their speed. However, in Call of the Dead's water, zombies lose much of their speed.
 * Any headless zombie will continue to take damage every second until they die, upon which the full 100 points for the headshot is awarded. Furthermore, any form of attack will kill it in one hit.
 * In Call of Duty: Black Ops, when the Zombies are alive their eyes are a orange/yellow color, but when they're killed they turn white.
 * In Dead Ops Arcade, the zombies have eyes that glow red as opposed to the yellow glow in other levels. Gary Okeys (developer) stated that the reason for this is variation in the different zombies that the players will face.
 * In Moon, completing both parts of Richtofen's Grand Scheme will cause their eye color to shift from the normal orange/yellow to blue, most likely to show that Richtofen is now controlling them.
 * In Call of Duty: World at War versions of Nacht der Untoten, Verrückt and Shi No Numa in solo, there are only 24 per round in total, where as in Call of Duty: Black Ops, only a max of 24 zombies can be alive at one time. Furthermore, in the three maps, zombies' health drops to that of Round 1 at around Round 65. However, in Der Riese, co-op and Call of Duty: Black Ops, the zombies' health gradually increases indefinitely.
 * If a zombie can't hit a player in a certain amount of time, the zombie dies, allowing another zombie to spawn.
 * A zombie can be seen on top of a balcony in Black Ops 2 credits while everyone is dancing.
 * In Nuketown Zombies, the zombies in radiation suits are reused models of the Soviets wearing hazmat suits in Rebirth. The only changes to them are yellow/blue eyes, yellow suits, black gloves and pouches, and a radiation symbol on the front pouch.