Standard Zombie

"These traces of former habitation somehow sadden me."

- Vortigaunt

The Zombie is a common enemy in the Half-Life series. They are created when a Headcrab attaches to the head of a suitable host and takes control over its victim's body, rendering the host a "headcrab zombie" (or "necrotic", as they are referred to by the Combine Overwatch). Ordinary zombies are referred to as "standard" or "classic" to distinguish them from the other types of zombies introduced in Half-Life 2, the Fast Zombie and the Poison Zombie.

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.

As their name suggests, zombies do not appear to retain much of their former intelligence and, like headcrabs, will blindly pursue their prey, oblivious to danger (such as the propeller traps seen in Ravenholm). Zombies do not respond to fire and will walk blindly into it, though they feel it on them and notice they are burning once they are on fire. Zombies mainly attack with swipes from their claws, but in Half-Life 2, they gain the ability to forcefully punt objects towards the player. Also in Half-Life 2, certain Zombies can be found "sleeping" and stand up to attack the player if they get too close or are attacked.

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!?", "What did I say!? Gaaah!", "My life's fading!" and "My eyes sting! Gaaah!". Similarly, raising the pitch of the sound file produces a normal sounding voice effect.
 * Interestingly, no Xen species are seen "infected" with headcrabs.
 * It's also interesting to note 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 isn't entirely clear whether this is a developer oversight or intentional, though the former seems more likely.
 * An unusual characteristic of the Poison and Fast Zombie variants is that only three middle fingers of the five on each zombie's hands develop into claws, compared to all the fingers on a standard headcrab zombie.
 * An often-overlooked effect that signals a zombie's presence is the buzz of flies, showing that the corrupted body of the victim is rotting.
 * 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.
 * According to the ambiguous canon of Half-Life: Opposing Force, if zombies aren't killed but allowed to flourish they will eventually mutate further into Gonomes.In Half Life Opposing Force zombie grunts take more damage then the zombie scientist.
 * 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