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 white tops, 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.
 * 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.


 * 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.

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