Zombies

Zombies are fictional, animated corpses of the living dead. Zombies are often conceived of as mindless creatures of instinct that eat the flesh or brains or living humans. These zombies are also depicted as difficult to kill, with the only effective means of stopping them is severe damage or total destruction of the zombie's brain. A staple in horror pop culture, several films illustrate this idea of a zombie.http://zombies.monstrous.com/

This sub-genre can largely be credited to filmmaker George Romero and his 1968 film called Night of the Living Dead. Since then several zombie films have been produced, spawning an even greater interest that can be seen throughout pop culture media, particularly comic books and fiction. http://classic-horror.com/reviews/night_of_the_living_dead_1968 Though the origin of the term "zombie" is a point of debate, one likely origin is from Voodoo lore, where it is believed that a dead person can be revived to do the bidding of a Voodoo priest.

Zombies of European lore are not entirely distinct from vampires and revenants, all of whom are reanimated dead people who return to life to steal the life force of the living. This connection is also present for zombie lore from Asia, where vampires and zombies are virtually the same kind of creature.

Zombie popularity has been boosted in recent years by their appearance in popular video games. Franchise games such as Resident Evil and Left for Dead have sold millions of copies to consumers wanting to get their hands on killing these creatures.http://www.denofgeek.com/games/545499/the_top_10_zombie_videogames.html

Some games, such as Call of Duty: World at War have included such game modes as Nazi Zombies, which is separate from the main game story. In this mini-game, the player must kill as many zombies as possible, with the zombies increasing in number and intensity the longer the player remains alive.http://www.nazizombies.com/