The answer is because aliens have been a topic of speculation for ages. It’s similar to vampires. Vampires have their own lore from books. Zombies don’t have that. They have other zombie movies. The only way for someone in a zombie movie to believe in zombies is if they’ve seen a movie about them or they have previously experienced a zombie outbreak.
It’s entirely plausible that individuals in a movie’s universe might contemplate the possibility of extraterrestrial life before an alien invasion.
It’s equally plausible that people have encountered the lore surrounding vampires before experiencing their first encounter.
It’s highly unlikely that people watched a zombie movie and then experienced a zombie outbreak.
Voodoo introduced zombies, but the modern zombie has diverged significantly from that concept, making them quite distinct from each other. A movie character pointing at a zombie and saying “it’s like one of those voodoo zombie things” doesn’t make much sense because the concepts are pretty different now. Additionally, more people associate Romero zombies with the word “zombie” rather than the voodoo zombie.
Arguably the modern view of zombies only dates back a couple decades. Night Of The Living Dead is the first instance of an unthinking undead plague. It only became a genre because US copyright law used to be really stupid, and the whole movie was accidentally public-domain. So it doesn’t take any huge shifts for an alternate universe to simply have no idea what the word “zombie” means, unless a character is familiar with Voodoo.
Exactly. The most plausible in-universe use of the word is to say “Wow, look at that thing. It’s like some kind of voodoo zombie.” Though, the issue with using that kind of statement is that way more people know about the modern Romero zombie than they do the voodoo one. So people wouldn’t really understand. It also implies that the zombie is supernatural.
Honestly, even Romero didn’t use the word. He called them ghouls. Which… I think is also basically like Voodoo zombies, but for vampires instead of priests.
Nope, apparently from pre-Islamic Arabian folklore. Humanoid monsters that lurk in graveyards and eat people. Fitting.
The answer is because aliens have been a topic of speculation for ages. It’s similar to vampires. Vampires have their own lore from books. Zombies don’t have that. They have other zombie movies. The only way for someone in a zombie movie to believe in zombies is if they’ve seen a movie about them or they have previously experienced a zombie outbreak.
It’s entirely plausible that individuals in a movie’s universe might contemplate the possibility of extraterrestrial life before an alien invasion.
It’s equally plausible that people have encountered the lore surrounding vampires before experiencing their first encounter.
It’s highly unlikely that people watched a zombie movie and then experienced a zombie outbreak.
I mean… Zombies are a Haitian voodoo thing.
Voodoo introduced zombies, but the modern zombie has diverged significantly from that concept, making them quite distinct from each other. A movie character pointing at a zombie and saying “it’s like one of those voodoo zombie things” doesn’t make much sense because the concepts are pretty different now. Additionally, more people associate Romero zombies with the word “zombie” rather than the voodoo zombie.
Arguably the modern view of zombies only dates back a couple decades. Night Of The Living Dead is the first instance of an unthinking undead plague. It only became a genre because US copyright law used to be really stupid, and the whole movie was accidentally public-domain. So it doesn’t take any huge shifts for an alternate universe to simply have no idea what the word “zombie” means, unless a character is familiar with Voodoo.
Exactly. The most plausible in-universe use of the word is to say “Wow, look at that thing. It’s like some kind of voodoo zombie.” Though, the issue with using that kind of statement is that way more people know about the modern Romero zombie than they do the voodoo one. So people wouldn’t really understand. It also implies that the zombie is supernatural.
Honestly, even Romero didn’t use the word. He called them ghouls. Which… I think is also basically like Voodoo zombies, but for vampires instead of priests.
Nope, apparently from pre-Islamic Arabian folklore. Humanoid monsters that lurk in graveyards and eat people. Fitting.