Zombie


 * For the game mode, see Zombies (Mode).

"I've always liked the "monster within" idea. I like the zombies being us. It's like, zombies are the blue-collar monsters."

- George A. Romero.

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, who then killed them.

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. 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, Thunder Gun, 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 a power-up, 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 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 new zombie map, Shangri-La, zombies are civilians, and female zombies 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.

Movement
The Zombies have varying speeds and movements, one of which is exclusive to Ascension. These speeds are:


 * A very slow march.
 * A slow stumble with arms by their sides.
 * In Shi No Numa, zombies might stumble around.
 * In Nacht der Untoten, Verrückt, Der Riese and Kino der Toten, zombies may occasionally 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 Frankenstein and in older classic Zombie films).
 * 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 and Call of the Dead, 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). Any other gun class requires 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.
 * In Ascension, on some occasions, zombies will crouch down and roll towards the player, or even sidestep to avoid getting hit.

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 most of their limbs. 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.

In both World at War and Black Ops, zombies retain some vestiges of human behavior. 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 Russian Zombies from Ascension will sometimes roll or sidestep to avoid being shot.

Characteristics
Some zombies will die from only a few rounds from the M1911 handgun, while other zombies can withstand up to or over a full magazine of a machine gun. This depends on the round the player is on, as the zombies have more health in later rounds, and depends on the map as well. The zombies' amount increase every round as well: for example: during the first round, approximately six zombies will spawn, during fifth approximately 30 and during fifteenth closer to 100 will spawn. In Nacht Der Untoten, Verrückt and Shi No Numa, a maximum of 24 zombies will spawn in one round, however, in later maps (and the Black Ops versions of the three maps), the amount increases vastly every round. The zombies also look different from each other. Some look as if they were burned to death, others look intimidating, while others are missing arms, or even have exposed bloody rib-cages. If a player shoots at a zombie's arm, it may fly off, and their rib cage will be exposed. On Verrückt, zombies sometimes appear to have staples inserted into their head, giving the assumption they died during surgery inside the Asylum. Most zombies in Black Ops have decomposed faces and have a slight change in their speed compared to other zombies. On Ascension, the zombies' faces seem to have warped much more than before. For instance, some zombies have a type of gas mask and their flesh sags in many places on their face. In Call of the Dead, the zombies are even more warped than the zombies in Ascension. Some have no jaw, and some will spawn with missing limbs, without the player gibbing them, and they have either charred black or frozen white skin, ripped sailor uniforms, civilian attire, or burned scuba suits (though it could be that they were stuck under water for quite some time). On Ascension and Call of the Dead, after killed, the zombie's eyes will turn normal as if it was never zombified. This is different from the earlier zombies, whose eyes kept their glow, but the glow became dimmer. For example, on the Black Ops Zombies maps "Five" and Kino der Toten, a Zombie's eyes will glow blue or white upon death. On the DS version of Black Ops, the zombies in The Temple have a rifle impaled through their bodies. In Shangri-La, zombies appear to be more infected than they ever looked, and very skinny, the zombies tend to be more infected in the mouth and neck area. Some who were not wearing shirts, have tattoos all over their back, some also wear some brownish suit. A few of them also wear a green military suit whilst wearing a gasmask, possibly VC or NVA.

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. Put simply, the previous round's health is divided by 10, and the resulting number is added to the previous round's health.

Examples: Round 9 health = 950. (950/10) + 950 = 1045 health in Round 10

Round 23 health = 3606. (3606/10) + 3606 = 3966 health in Round 24

Round 41 health = 20057. (20057/10) + 20057 = 22062 health in Round 42

This results in an exponential growth in zombie health, culminating at 5.5 million health in Round 100.

Trivia

 * In the Wii version of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the zombies' voices are higher pitched.
 * Some Zombies are seen marching in a Nazi goose step towards the windows in Verrückt, Der Riese, and Kino der Toten.
 * In World at War, if a Grenade is thrown at a zombie about to come out 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.
 * The zombie AI is programmed to follow and attack whichever player is closest to it.
 * When in water, zombies lose very little 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 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 Black Ops when the Zombies are alive their eyes are a orange/yellow color, but when they're killed they go white.
 * The female Zombies in the map Shangri-La are the second female enemy in the Call of Duty series, the first being Castro's Mistress.