Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

From tv shows like the walking dead, z nation, and izombie, movies like scouts guide and world war z, to video games like dead island, dead rising, resident evil, and countless others. Some people seem to believe that there is way, way too much zombie stuff.

I personally don't feel this way and am of the opinion that you can never have too much zombie.

How do you feel?

Yes.

But there is nothing to replace them yet, so nobody can move on.

Everybody's into a good apocalypse, and zombies are the most convenient in loads of ways. I'm fine with them as long as they're good. I wish someone would do a real good, in-depth survival story from a more unique angle though, I love wilderness survival/Hatchet kinda stuff. The Girl Who Owned a City would be cool as a zombie crossover.

Yeah… but if its done good, I'll watch it.

The reason I feel for the loads of zombies are because they combine end of the world with a fightable enemy without completely leaving the realm of reality/going full supernatural. This allows the audience to put themselves in the casts place, gives a simple enemy to fight and a simple, yet overwhelming conflict. This can allow lazy writers to be lazy or good writers to allow other elements into the story without it cluttering it up. It also gives the cast a believable sense of hopelessness and paranoia as well as a sliver lining.

Look at other monsters and one of the above three gets lost. Aliens sacrifice fightablity (if the aliens are fightable, this sacrifices believabilty) Ghosts and Skeletons are too supernatural, as are demons. Many other monsters don't work in large numbers and would sacrifice "end of the world scenario" Other end of the world scenarios don't give a fightable enemy, just a disaster to survive.

I think it was.

Fact is, zombies are rapidly going out of style. More and more zombie-related works are playing zombies for comedy rather than serious drama, and the rare works that use zombies seriously often try to distance themselves from the horde of cliche zombie movies and games, such as refusing to call them zombies, giving the zombies a pseudo-scientific origin rather than a supernatural one, etc. etc. etc. Zombies are on the decline, and before long they'll be just like any other monsters.

Eh, it's just a fad. And, like any other fad, it will fade only to be replaced by something else. I myself have nothing against zombies. I like shows such as The Walking Dead, and fighting zombies in Call of Duty: Black Ops I and II was really fun. Even the "zombies" in Halo: Reach and the Flood in Halo 4 were really fun to play as. It just gets boring after awhile. And besides, it's not like literally every video game and every movie has been focused on zombies; most of them have not. It's just a really popular thing right now (which, as Snickerway pointed out, may not be the case for much longer).

I wouldn't call it a fad. More like a fandom. There's a massive culture surrounding the undead, and Zombies stay alive in pop culture thanks to its easy wide appeal, the public domain concept that anyone can build on, and the overall fun of blasting zeds in the faces with a shotgun which, lets face it; we all enjoy.

I could go on regarding how Zombies became so popular as a concept but I'll leave this post brief

All in all, I don't think zombies are going out of style and at least I'd rather have the undead saturating the market than Minions

It's ironic because I feel like pseudo-scientific zombies have become the cliche. The last piece of mainstream media I've seen with supernatural undead was the 3rd season of American Horror Story (though I don't play a whole lot of zombie games, so maybe there's more of that there, idk).

As for the OP, the short answer is yes, but I don't mind. I don't watch The Walking Dead anymore (it got old fast), but I caught half an episode of Z Nation which was enough to convince me that there's enough room for fresh zombie movies/shows/games.

So long as man yearns for apocalyptic fiction, people will continue to use zombies, at least until something else can take their place. Until then the only way for zombies to go out of style if if apocalyptic fiction also becomes cliche

Zombie stories tend to be less about the zombies and more about how society reacts to them, which is why I think they got so popular unlike other monster flicks. You got people struggling to survive, betraying each other, and fighting over meager resources in the midst of a harrowing plague of undeath. There tends to be personal drama, political drama, survival drama, and just good ol' fashion senseless violence. It's likely that wide range of appeal that has made them so popular.

I can't comprehend what type of monster or threat will replace them. Perhaps AI or some other fictional monster people make up.

I don't know, I feel like zombies aren't nearly as prevalent as they were even like a year ago. Perhaps I'm just not paying attention to any media that would have zombies in it. The last thing I remember watching that had zombies was the season 2 premier of Gravity Falls. I'm just not into zombies, but I don't spend my days complaining about it. It's plenty easy to find media that doesn't have zombies if that's not your style, so whatever.

Not until "Return of the Zombies from beneath the Farm" comes to theaters

A couple years ago the entertainment market was over-saturated with vampires. Now it's over-saturated with zombies. In a couple years it will be over-saturated with something else. That's how fads work.

They always do this.
We have gone through the Vampire phase, Zombie phase, and ghost phases. So we will probably venture into some other horror monster clique next. I got money on Alien monsters.

Is an fad first was over-saturated with vampires there's was a load of vampire things then move on with the zombies is going be with the cycle.

No.

People like to say these things are just fads, but really they ignore how much these monsters endure the test of time. Sure, there are times in which these types of stories peak and recently zombies did and I think its lulling a bit. You still get vampire films, we still get Frankenstein films, we still get werewolf films, and still get ones with a mix and match they just tend to go more under the radar

Also over-saturation really doesn't apply I think, nearly every zombie film or game or whatever has their own, sometimes minor differences. You don't go into a horror section of a store that sells movies or whatever and see that it's 90% zombies. There are plenty of stories. If you're truly sick of them just ignore the genre completely or something.

Yeah I agree, there is nothing new under the sun and any and every genre has roots the past myths, urban legends and anecdotes of lore, as well as historical accounts. and while many concepts frequently fall into the niche and rise into the mainstream, they never go away

Zombies: As undying as fiction as they are as entities.