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Why doesn't zombie lore exist in many zombie stories?

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EastOfEden said:
In Zombi U, there's definitely "zombie lore" - you learn about
the first zombies and John Dee who created a prophecy of the apocalypse 400 years ago. Many people believed the prophecy but most of the population were skeptics.
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I was playing Tlou last night and my oldest daughter and I were debating which was better, that or Zombi U. I said Tlou but it's no slight on Zombi U.

That game itself justified my Wii U. I'd flip my shit if they continued the series someday, I don't care if it's Wii U, or even multiplatform. Just gimme gimme gimme!
MikeOfTheLivingDead said:
Romero doesn't use the word Zombie. Before night of the living dead, popular fiction referred to these type of creatures as ghouls. What Romero did was create a whole new spin on a ghoul. Romero claims the first time he ever heard someone refer to them as zombies was well after he had released the movie. It was a review in a Latin American newspaper. Romero always refers to them as the living dead.
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Correct on all accounts but, to me, a ghoul is a living person that eats the dead. In Lovecraftian fiction this eventually transforms a person into an entirely new being.

God I love this shit.
 
What's funny is that it's pretty much the opposite with Vampires. The characters usually know that daylight etc. will hurt them. And if they don't they'll read about it in some book.

Though that sometimes leads to some dumb moments when the author wants to establish his/her own lore, like:

"Haha, you idiot, garlic doesn't bother me at all. You read too much fiction. "

"AHHHH Holy water!"
 
Zakalwe said:
"well, if no else is going to say it I will. Zombies."
"Zombies? Yeh right, zombies aren't real!"
"OK man, if they're not real just close your eyes and those thing outside will disappear. Me? I've seen enough zombie movies to know that stocking up on anything that can bust a skull open with the least amount of effort is probably a good idea."
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I'm pretty sure the first Dead Rising had dialogue that went just like this.
 
Because the zombies don't really stand up to scrutiny. The main characters have to be sufficiently unaware (read: stupid) of what they're up against for there to be any kind of narrative tension.
 
Haly said:
Because the zombies don't really stand up to scrutiny. The main characters have to be sufficiently unaware (read: stupid) of what they're up against for there to be any kind of narrative tension.
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Being unaware is not the only way to create narrative tension.

A few episodes into The Walking Dead game or show, the "walkers" are no longer unknown as the characters have sufficient experience. This doesn't remove the narrative tension.
 
Winterfang said:
Not knowing that their zombies is what makes them scary. If everyone knew what a zombie was, then they basically had an idea of what to do.
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But you know if the US had a zombie-like infection that's the first thing we'd call them.

The dead coming back to life is one of the oldest cultural ideas/myths ever. It's weird to see it absent in many zombie films/properties.
 
DedValve said:
Case in point, resident evil....to some extent.
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Except it's not. as I reasoned above. With a little experience the "unknown" aspect of the creatures behaviour and how they're dealt with becomes routine anyway. Zombie stories that are set in universes where the lore doesn't exist don't suddenly lose their tension and ability to scare once the characters understand what they're dealing with.
 
The worst thing about zombie movies is whern they blow a zombies blood and guts out on them and don't get infected. The blood splatters all over their face.
 
Joni said:
It is too difficult to justify a zombie outbreak in a universe where zombie fiction exists.
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A lot of you guys really need to watch Return of the Living Dead and then come back to this thread. It takes place in a world where Night of the Living Dead was a movie that everyone knows about but was also based on an actual small outbreak that the government managed to contain and cover up. So nothing you know from the movie helps because it had all been changed around to conceal the true nature of the threat.

"I thought if we destroyed the brain they'd die! It worked in the movie!"
"Well they're not dying now!"
"You mean the movie lied!?"

It's also the movie that started the whole "they want to eat your brains" thing as well as zombies that weren't slow shamblers. Really good movie.
 
Because half the fun of the setup is forcing characters into situations where they have to learn the rules of how the disaster works.
 
Zakalwe said:
I can't agree with this.

With a little experience your characters are going to be following zombie lore rules regardless of whether or not zombie lore exists in your universe. If they're zomibes in every single way but the name, then omitting the name isn't going to cause more fear for the audience.
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They are but that's called character development. Obviously the characters will eventually get better at dealing with the immediate threat. It's just that their fear is more convincing from not knowing anything whatsoever about them at first. There are plenty of satire that includes the dialogue that you want. No reason for everything to include that though when the established series that are the most successful show that you don't need to do so.
 
Basic storytelling and the unknown being scarier than the known.

That said, in certain stories involving "zombies" it wouldn't matter if zombie lore existed or not: it wouldn't save the characters. I can't remember if they existed in the RE universe, but no amount of Romero lore would have helped anyone deal with the zombie -> crimson head -> licker transformation and the various other mutations that spawned from the various viri in that series. Same with the World War Z film or the Evil Dead.
 
PdotMichael said:
Well, zombies were magical creatures.

Not sure who started with giving them a "scientific" background.
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There are more diseased zombies than magical mummies/cursed undead nowadays. It just seems more plausible for whatever reason.

Classic zombie is not popular. Modern, fast gory zombie is the new hotness
 
Crossing Eden said:
They are but that's called character development. Obviously the characters will eventually get better at dealing with the immediate threat. It's just that their fear is more convincing from not knowing anything whatsoever about them at first. There are plenty of satire that includes the dialogue that you want. No reason for everything to include that though when the established series that are the most successful show that you don't need to do so.
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Fear of the unknown is not the only way to scare people.

daviyoung said:
what's zombie lore?
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Myths. Stories. Films. Etc...
 
Zakalwe said:
Why?
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Because people would know what zombies are, the best ways to dispose of them, ... Also, because you know, a zombie outbreak in itself is already widely unbelievable and only works with the army being stupid enough not to do anything until it is too late. If you have zombie lore, and then you have an actual zombie showing up, you can be sure they'll take it a lot more seriously.

Talyn said:
A lot of you guys really need to watch Return of the Living Dead and then come back to this thread. It takes place in a world where Night of the Living Dead was a movie that everyone knows about but was also based on an actual small outbreak that the government managed to contain and cover up. So nothing you know from the movie helps because it had all been changed around to conceal the true nature of the threat.

"I thought if we destroyed the brain they'd die! It worked in the movie!"
"Well they're not dying now!"
"You mean the movie lied!?"

It's also the movie that started the whole "they want to eat your brains" thing as well as zombies that weren't slow shamblers. Really good movie.
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Will add it to my shopping list.
 
Most of the best zombie movies are basically retellings or reboots of an 'initial outbreak' story, and most repeat the same story notes each time. Sort of like a folk tale. I personally would enjoy the movies less if they moved away from that and into something more iterative, I like seeing the different ways they tell the same story.
 
MikeOfTheLivingDead said:
Romero doesn't use the word Zombie. Before night of the living dead, popular fiction referred to these type of creatures as ghouls. What Romero did was create a whole new spin on a ghoul. Romero claims the first time he ever heard someone refer to them as zombies was well after he had released the movie. It was a review in a Latin American newspaper. Romero always refers to them as the living dead.
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"With those bay doors open there's gonna be a thousand zombies in here. That'll keep the heat off us"

-Peter, Dawn of the Dead
 
The threat in most Traditional Zombie stories isn't the Zombies themselves but Society when it panics. If Zombie lore exists in the universe then the immediate knowledge of what to do to combat it prevents panic from being as large and widespread.

If a traditional Zombie outbreak happened in real life, Military would simply quarantine the outbreak area and carpet bomb them rather than try to contain them man to man or try to find a cure for this 'mysterious disease outbreak.' This is why more modern takes on Zombies have to change various aspects to make them more threatening.

TWD establishes a world where once there are zombies, everyone is infected. There is no way to prevent a dead body from reanimating. The lack of containment means that they'll always be a threat in addition to the dangers that arise when society breaks down.

28 Days Later introduces fast moving rage-fueled zombies so the infection spreads faster than it can be contained and the zombies themselves are a much more direct threat.

Resident Evil establishes that there are more varieties that are vastly more powerful and dangerous than traditional zombies and on top of that there's an evil corporation that is intentionally working against the Protagonists making headway against the disease pretty much impossible.

These newer stories with a twist on zombie lore have done so in order to give more viability to a lasting threat even once the characters learn zombie weaknesses. But in most they still need to be ignorant of what the threat is initially for Society to panic in the ways necessary for civilization as we currently know it to break down and put the characters at a disadvantage.
 
I don't buy a world with knowledge of zombie lore would instantly be able to neutralize it. I think that would make it even slower for the vast majority of people to react because they'll likely be skeptics until it's too late.
 
I'm pretty sure it's because the zombies in these sort of stories are more just a plot device rather than actual fleshed-out characters. Like in TWD, it's more about the people dealing with the situation and how a pandemical catastrophe turns society back into a Wild-West-like state. It's about social science not biological science.

Simply put, because it's not important. It's mainly about what happens due to their existence not why they exist.
 
Kusagari said:
I don't buy a world with knowledge of zombie lore would instantly be able to neutralize it. I think that would make it even slower for the vast majority of people to react because they'll likely be skeptics until it's too late.
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A world with knowledge about what a Zombie is, wouldn't have widespread panic over them. Traditional zombies themselves aren't a threat to the world at large because they move slowly, don't think critically, and use no weapons. Without putting a non-traditional twist on them, they're simply not a big deal.
 
Because too much of it is specific to the pop culture of the last 50 years.

It breaks suspension of disbelief, if the characters are aware of it, and the whole thing just implodes on itself. This is why you'll usually only see characters aware of modern zombie lore in comedies.
 
Speaking of which didn't Left 4 Dead dealt with this? Granted, I really disliked L4D when they went from "tell a story from each stage, self contained" into "full story that makes absolutely no sense", but they have shades of this, like how Zoey watched a lot of horor flicks so she is a bit savvy on how things work.
 
Horseticuffs said:
In the Walking Dead comics, if memory serves, it's an alternate reality where George Romero never made "Night of the Living Dead" so they don't have that cultural touchstone to pin the virus on.
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Originally, The Walking Dead was supposed to BE Night of the Living Dead, until Jim Valentino convinced Kirkman that it'd be smarter to call it something else and create a new IP.
 
Radogol said:
Originally, The Walking Dead was supposed to BE Night of the Living Dead, until Jim Valentino convinced Kirkman that it'd be smarter to call it something else and create a new IP.
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Yes, very interesting article in the color version of issue #1
 
Archaeopteryx said:
Because in such a world, a zombie apocalypse would never happen because everyone would instantly know how to stop it.
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That's sort of how I feel, with caveats. If there was a zombie outbreak in the western world everyone has already essentially been trained for the scenario. It wouldn't be an apocalypse.

As for why the lore doesn't exist/they don't call them zombies, I think part of it is people not wanting to feel like their doing zombies to death (har har) or turning people off with notions of what the work will contain. If you instantly know they're zombies, it could become self referential and meta very quickly.
 
Fuchsdh said:
That's sort of how I feel, with caveats. If there was a zombie outbreak in the western world everyone has already essentially been trained for the scenario. It wouldn't be an apocalypse.
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except it doesn't matter how well trained you are, the zombies always win
 
Boss Doggie said:
Speaking of which didn't Left 4 Dead dealt with this? Granted, I really disliked L4D when they went from "tell a story from each stage, self contained" into "full story that makes absolutely no sense", but they have shades of this, like how Zoey watched a lot of horor flicks so she is a bit savvy on how things work.
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Wait what full story that didnt make sense?
 
I would say its because thatd eliminate people thinking they could cure zombies, but High School of the Dead had people do that anywsy.
 
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