Standard Zombie

"What the hell are these things, and why are they wearing science team uniforms!?"

- Black Mesa Security Guard

The Standard Zombie is the most common Zombie form seen in the Half-Life series. It is the manifestation of a standard Headcrab attaching to a victim's cranium and taking over their nervous system.

Overview


Once a Headcrab successfully attaches to a host, the Headcrab will assume control of all their motor functions, able to walk and attack with the host's arms and legs. Through some unknown biological process, the host's hands turn into long, skeletal claws and a massive hole appear in their chest lined with the hosts' ribs, becoming a makeshift "mouth", with their ribs serving as teeth (zombies have been observed to feed by ripping chunks of flesh off of corpses and stuffing them into this maw) Removal of the Headcrab reveals that the host's head is bent abnormally upwards, their hair is matted with blood, and their face is pale, with their eyes shut and mouth open in a frozen scream. In Half-Life 2, the muffled pleas and screams coming from the zombies indicates that the victim may be somewhat aware of their zombified state and obviously in an unimaginable amount of pain the entire time.

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

 * Oddly, Half Life 2 Zombies wear refugee clothing, even in City 17 where they should be blue like civilian clothing, and at resistance outposts where they should be wearing the resistance standard attire. This can likely be explained as due to refugees' being unarmed, as resistance fighters would be less likely to be killed and a regular Citizen in denim clothing would likely lose their jacket anyway, resulting in virtually the same appearance or a developer oversight in which the zombie model of the citizen clothing layout uses one of the beta white shirts.
 * Playing parts of a victim's sound file backwards produces extremely disturbing yells of pain. The reversed cries have been interpreted as "Oh, god help! 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!", "Put it out!". Similarly, raising the pitch of the sound file produces the words in a normal man's voice.
 * Coincidentally, part of the zombies' standard cry (which "Help God help" is the reverse of) sounds highly similar to the vulgar expletive for "my penis" in the Hokkien language. Using "my penis" as an expletive in Hokkien is equivalent to saying "what the heck" or "damn it" in the English language.
 * 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.
 * Two Standard Zombie growls can be heard in the film Drag Me to Hell, at 2:15. The Half-Life series uses many stock sounds heard in many other video games and films.
 * As well as being in the movie Drag Me to Hell the Zombie sounds are used in Valve's Left 4 Dead series.
 * In Half-Life: Opposing Force, spawning the dead soldier zombie will reveal its pose as that of spawned dead HECU grunt.
 * Standard zombies move slower than the player and take some time to swing back. This means that, with enough room, you can run up to a standard zombie, hit it with the crowbar, quickly backtrack a few steps, and repeat this indefinitely, if you need to save ammo.
 * In the 1998 version of the Half-Life Prima Guide, Headcrab Zombies are referfed to as "Mawmen", most likely because of the mouth made in their chest out of their ribcage.
 * In the WC mappack can be found a map named " ". It consists of a small dark room with a boxing ring in the middle, lit by a single lamp. There two Zombies start fighting each other once a bell rings. When the first one is killed, the bell rings again and the remaining Zombie remains still.
 * The security guard and HECU zombie models seen in Opposing Force have no HD model.

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