Standard Zombie

The Standard Zombie is the most common Zombie form seen in the Half-Life series. It is created when a Standard Headcrab attaches to the head of the host.

Overview


Once a Headcrab successfully attaches to a host, the Headcrab's alien physiology causes various "mutations" to manifest in its host, such as elongated claws, increased strength, and a sharp-toothed "mouth" that bisects the victim's chest cavity from neck to groin. In Half-Life 2, the chest "maw" instead appears to be a ripped open chest cavity with no sternum. Removal of the Headcrab reveals that the host's head is strangely untouched with its head bent back and mottled, bloody hair and bloody face set in a scream. In Half-Life 2, horrified sounds emanating from zombies imply that, while severely injured, the host is at least partially aware of its horrific situation.

Occasionally, Headcrab zombies may survive losing both legs and their lower torso, and continue to crawl along using their arms. In most cases, a Headcrab remains attached to its host until the zombie is destroyed, although in Half-Life 2, they will occasionally detach from the host if it is rendered immobile by its injuries.

Trivia

 * Playing parts of a victim's sound file backwards produces extremely disturbing yells of pain. The reversed cries have been interpreted as "God help me" and "get it off me". If set on fire, the victims may say things that might be interpreted as "Why, why, why!?", "Help God help, help me!", "Gaaah!", "Gaaaah, I'm on fire! Gaaaaah!", "My life's fading!" and "My eyes sting! Gaaah!". Similarly, raising the pitch of the sound file produces a normal sounding voice effect.
 * Of note is that, upon removing the Headcrab, it can be seen that standard zombies appear to either be white or oriental males. While there is every reason to assume a standard Headcrab could infect any race or gender of human, there are no other race or gender of zombies. It is not entirely clear whether this is a developer oversight or intentional, though the former seems more likely.
 * In Half-Life, zombies are seen "feeding" from dead scientists and soldiers by taking flesh from corpses and stuffing it into their chest "mouth." However, this is not seen in Half-Life 2. This behavior might have been scrapped or simply overlooked and not programmed. Another theory is that they put the "food" directly into their stomach.
 * In the non-HD variant of Half-Life and its expansions, a zombie's Headcrab appears to be "fastened" tighter to the victim's face, revealing the eerie outline of a human skull.
 * In Opposing Force zombie grunts take more damage than the zombie scientist. This might be because parts of the grunts' PCV suit seem to still be intact.
 * In the file "npc_BaseZombie.cpp" in the Source SDK .gcf file zombies used to have the power to toss their Headcrabs off of their heads and at Gordon.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life: Day One
 * Half-Life
 * Half-Life: Uplink
 * Half-Life: Opposing Force
 * Half-Life: Blue Shift
 * Half-Life: Decay
 * Half-Life 2
 * Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar
 * Half-Life 2: Episode One
 * Half-Life 2: Episode Two